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How To Sell 


QUALITY 



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HOW TO SELL 


QUALITY 

A Resume of Methods Successfully used by Prominent 
Salesmen to Meet Price Competition; Hold 
Customers for the Future and to 
Cement Good-Will 



BY J. C. ASPLEY 

Editor “Sales Management Magazine”; Author “Field 
Tactics for Salesmen ”; “ What a Salesman 
Should Know about Credits” and 
other Books for Salesmen 



POCKET EDITION 


V C\ 


Published by 


The Dartnell Corporation 

Dartnell Building 
Ravenswood and Leland Avenues 
Chicago, Illinois 


All privileges of reproducing 
illustrations or letter press 
expressly reserved by the 
publishers 



Copyright 1921 

J. C. ASPLEY 

Chicago 

Entered at Stationer's Hall, London 


‘Printed by The Dartnell Press 


JAN 14 1922 
©CLA653513 








iHIS is the fifth of a series of pocket “how” 


books brought out by The Dartnell Cor- 


A poration to help salesmen grow. It is pub¬ 
lished"^ meet an era of price competition, keener 
and fiercer than any price competition yet experi¬ 
enced by this generation. 

This competition into which we are headed is 
going to test the mettle of every man who sells 
goods. Those who do not understand the power 
of quality over price must fail in the test. Price 
salesmanship cannot possibly succeed. 

On the other hand a salesman who understands 
how to sell quality, who has the courage to refuse 
to allow goods made to sell on quality to be com¬ 
pared with goods made to sell on price, will come 
out with flying colors, a made man. 

It is to help you to meet these conditions that 
members of the Dartnell Editorial Staff have in¬ 
terviewed salesmen in all lines of business. Many 
of these men are now holding executive positions 
because of their ability to successfully sell quality 
in the face of price competition of the keenest 
kind. From the hundreds of plans gathered we 
have selected those which will prove most helpful 
to you, and to other salesmen in different lines of 
business. 

Not all of these plans will be new to you. In 
fact, most of them are plans which in prewar 


3 


days were common property. Some of them you 
have already read of in sales bulletins. But during 
the recent seller's market most of us have grown 
soft. It was so easy to get business that we have 
forgotten many of the little strategems which 
stood us in such good stead in 1914. So we have 
risked the verdict of “old stuff" in the hope that 
the resurrection of these forgotten plans may help 
you to greater winnings. 

If this book reaches your hands prior to the 
spring of 1922 much of the message it brings will 
seem of remote usefulness. But read it anyway. 
Store the ideas away in the back of your head 
against the day which is surely coming when you 
will be called upon to use them. Any salesman who 
will take the methods advocated in this book and 
after reshaping them to fit his peculiar problems, 
apply them in his selling work will be a better 
salesman and a bigger business producer than he 
possibly could if he limits himself to his own ex¬ 
perience. 


4 


An Appreciation 

On behalf of those salesmen who may find this little 
book helpful, the author wishes to thank the following 
sales executives who have given generously of their 
experience in selling quality merchandise so that this 
manual might be of practical help to those who sell 
things: 

J. E. Kelley, general sales manager, Simonds Mfg. Co. 
John Poncet, general sales manager, Cheney Brothers 

F. S. Fenton, Jr., sales manager, Anchor Stove Co. 

C. W. Treadwell, manager sales instruction, Burroughs 
Adding Machine Co. 

H. N. Otis, secretary, Tubular Woven Fabric Company 
H. E. Peterson, general sales manager, Beaver Board Co. 
E. G. Anderson, president, American Bronze Corporation 
H. A. Porter, sales manager, Harris Automatic Press Co. 
Champe S. Andrews, vice-president, O. B. Andrews Co. 

R. H. McGredy, secretary and sales manager, Shepard 
Electric Crane & Hoist Co. 

C. A. Burnham, secretary, Northrup, King & Co. 

J. M. Sparrow, president, Imperial Varnish & Color Co. 
Charles H. Hathway, president, Badger Mfg. Corporation 
H. B. Nickerson, secretary, American Steam Gauge & 
Valve Mfg. Co. 

W. W. Dodge, manager, National Veneer Products Co. 

R. A. Barnes, general sales manager, Bankers Supply Co. 
C. J. Fleur, sales manager, The Larrowe Milling Co. 
Edward T. Hall, secretary, Ralston Purina Company 

G. L .Willman, manager. The Studebaker Corporation. 

W. S. Thomas, sales manager, Pratt Food Co. 

W. H. Case, sales manager, Buster Brown Hosiery Mills 
R. C. Thompson, treasurer, Globe Optical Company 
Ralph N. Mitchell, sales manager, Waggener Paint Co. 


5 


H. J. Winsten, sales manager, H. Black Co. 

B. W. Thayer, vice-president, Minneapolis Knitting Works 
H. H. Hobart, manager service bureau, The Curtis Com¬ 
panies 

H. R. Henderson, president, The Absorene Manufactur¬ 
ing Co. 

E. T. Gray, western sales manager, Devoe & Raynolds 
Company 

Paul R. Clark, president, Fireproof Products Co. 

G. S. Rosborough, sales manager, The Measuregraph Co. 
John K. Broderick, president, Broderick & Bascom Rope 

Company 

R .E. Nuese, secretary, Francis H. Leggett Company 
Duncan Keith, vice-president, Burgess Battery Company 

H. W. Dutton, sales manager, Skinner Manufacturing Co. 
0. A. Dole, sales manager, Evinrude Motor Co. 

M. E. Ledlie, sales manager, The Detroit Vapor Stove Co. 

C. E. Butcher, sales manager, The National Roofing Co. 
William Maxwell, vice president, Thomas A. Edison, Inc. 
Dr. A. Holmes, president, Drake University 

G. D. Colburn, general manager, Dilver Mfg. Co. 

Saunders Norvell, chairman, McKesson & Robbins, Inc. 

A. A. Breed, president, Crane & Breed Manufacturing Co. 
K. D. Umrath, sales manager, Hussman Refrigerator Co. 
Harry P. Hotz, sales manager, Schlitz Beverage Company 
E. D. Voorhis, sales manager, H. D. Lee Company 
Paul Jones, sales manager, True Shape Hosiery Co. 

J. W. Wiley, secretary, Vitrolite Company 


6 


CONTENTS 

I—What Quality Means to a Salesman 

II—The Basis of all Quality Sales 

III— Laying a Sound Foundation 

IV— Making the Buyer Want Quality 

V—How to Create a Quality Atmosphere 

VI— Getting Your Price 

VII— Making a Big Price Seem Small 

VIII— Price Objections as Talking Points 

IX—Beating the Price Cutter at His Own Game 

X— Closing a Quality Sale 

XI— Keeping the Old Customer Sold on Quality 


7 


PRICE is the poorest argument that can be used 
in selling , because an article sold at a price 
usually has no other argument in its favor . 

A QUALITY article has everything in its favor 
including the price asked for it. 

H. W. Dutton 


8 





I—What Quality Means 
to a Salesman 

S OME years ago H. J. Heinz was implored by 
his salesmen to put out a ten cent can of to¬ 
matoes. 

At that time the Heinz product was a twelve 
cent seller, and his salesmen thought that if they 
had a cheaper brand it would be a simple matter 
for them to meet the lower priced competition. 

But Mr. Heinz would have none of it. “Don't 
you know,” he said, “that the reason this business 
has been successful is because we don't have a ten 
cent can to sell. We don't want to put ourselves 
in the 'ten cent' class. Sell quality and the price 
won't matter .” 

There are salesmen today who have the same 
notion about the price question as the Heinz sales¬ 
men then had. They are convinced that the reason 
they cannot get more business is because their 
price is too high. If the house would only cut the 
prices a little they know they could get a lot more 
business. But could they? 

The Steinway piano sells for nearly three times 
the price of a piano made by a competitor who 
claims that his piano is just as good as a Stein- 


9 


HOW TO SELL QUALITY 


way. Yet last year Stein way salesmen sold 
twenty-five pianos for every instrument sold by 
the price competitor. 

A Price Raise that Increased Sales 

You can get a seven passenger automobile 
as low as $750, one fifth of the price you would 
have to pay for a seven passenger Cadillac. Yet 
over 22,000 Cadillac cars were sold last year to 
people who willingly paid five times as much to 
get Cadillac quality. When all other automobile 
manufacturers were reducing prices in 1914, Cad¬ 
illac deliberately raised its price. The salesmen 
were positive that sales would suffer. But on the 
contrary they increased even faster than they did 
with the lower prices. A recent analysis of the 
cars registered in the city of Detroit shows the 
Cadillac as third on the list, with more cars than 
all the so-called popular priced cars with two ex¬ 
ceptions. 

If you are willing to walk up a flight of stairs 
you can buy a suit of clothes that looks like wool 
for $17. Sears, Roebuck & Company list gar¬ 
ments for even less in their big 1921 catalogue. 
As compared with these cheap garments Hart, 
Schaffner & Marx clothes sell for two to three 
times as much. But the public knows them as be- 


10 




WHAT QUALITY MEANS TO A SALESMAN 


ing all wool. Consequently Hart, Schaffner & 
Marx, selling a suit at twice the price of its com¬ 
petitors, does almost as much business as all its 
price cutting competitors put together. 

Only a Quality Business Can Endure 

During the ten years that the Evinrude motor 
has been on the market over fifty competitive 
motors have been brought out to sell at a lower 
price. Nearly all of these cheaper motors have 
fallen by the wayside and there are now more 
than 150,000 Evinrudes in use. 

A survey of sales of members of the American 
Association of Wholesale Opticians shows that the 
companies who do the bulk of the business are not 
those who have the lowest prices, but those who 
put out the highest quality merchandise and 
charge prices commensurate with quality. 

Take your own line. How many concerns are 
there who undersell you in price? These competi¬ 
tors go about the country saying that their prod¬ 
uct is “just as good” as yours. They advance all 
kinds of imaginary reasons why they can under¬ 
sell you. They share the advertising “saving,” 
operate a profit sharing plant, control their own 
sources of raw materials, or offer some equally 


ll 




HOW TO SELL QUALITY 


plausible excuse for their lower price. Naturally 
they make an occasional sale—you can sell some 
people anything once—but the fact remains that 
the combined sales of these price pirates is but a 
fraction of the business done by the quality 
houses. Moreover, the quality house will be in 
business and prospering when the man who stakes 
his future on price alone will have long since been 
forgotten. 

Cheap Prices Give the Lie to Quality Talk 

These concerns are able to pile up these sales 
records, not because of their price, but in spite of 
it The price of a Steinway piano is its badge of 
quality. Even though there may be other pianos 
“just as good,” the man who buys a Steinway gets 
its extra cost back every time he looks at it in his 
drawing room. 

“I am quite aware that I am paying more for a 
Knox hat,” says Justice Brandeis of the United 
States Supreme Court, “but the feeling that I am 
wearing a Knox hat is worth the difference.” 

Cheap things are made for people who cannot 
pay more; for people who must get along the best 
they can with something almost as good. Such 
goods are built down to a price, rather than up to 


12 




WHAT QUALITY MEANS TO A SALESMAN 


a standard. Lacking quality, sooner or later they 
will cause dissatisfaction. The buyer forgets that 
when he made his purchase he compromised with 
something cheap. He expects the same service 
from his $150 stenciled piano as he would from a 
Steinway. When the expected service is not forth¬ 
coming he is aggravated and put out. Forever 
after he is “down” on the man who sold him. 

The Price Is Soon Forgotten 

Contrawise, the man who buys a quality product 
soon forgets that he paid more for it, and remem¬ 
bers only the satisfaction it gives him. Just as the 
man who buys the substitute regrets it ever after¬ 
ward, so the man who buys a quality article will 
be a life long booster for the man who sold it to 
him. Quality is the strongest backing you have. 

Quality means repeat orders. It means trade 
that stays with you year in and year out. It means 
that you will be able to hold what you have and 
add to it. In short it means enduring success, and 
not success built upon the quick sands of here-to- 
day-and-gone-tomorrow customers. 

A certain salesman for many years represented 
one of the large St. Louis coffee houses in a south¬ 
western territory. The line was one that sold on 
a quality basis and was generally recognized by 


13 




HOW TO SELL QUALITY 


the trade as being a business builder. During the 
ten years that this salesman had been with this 
house he built up a good trade and had a great 
deal of secret satisfaction in knowing his relation¬ 
ship with most of his customers was so intimate 
that they would buy anything he told them to buy. 

One Salesman’s Tragic Mistake 

Two years ago an eastern house, learning of 
the big business that this salesman was taking 
from this territory, made him a proposition. It 
was a very attractive proposition. In fact it was 
so attractive that on the basis of what the sales¬ 
man sold in 1919 he would make from two to 
three times as much money with the eastern 
house. So he decided to make the change. 

Being a good salesman and well liked by his 
trade it was not difficult for him to get many of 
his old customers to try the new line. Aside from 
his personal acquaintance with the trade, the new 
line allowed a larger margin of profit to the 
dealer, if the dealer wished to take it, and you 
know how the dealers love to hear the jingle of 
the extra profit in their cash registers. Conse¬ 
quently, the first three months the salesman had 
the new line he did a land office business. He won- 


14 




WHAT QUALITY MEANS TO A SALESMAN 


dered how he had ever been such a fool as to work 
for his old employer at such a piker salary. 

But our friend was soon to learn one of the 
great lessons of business. The next trip over his 
territory found the trade which once welcomed 
him with open arms, chilly and distant. The deal¬ 
ers had forgotten all about the extra profit that 
they made on his coffee, and complained bitterly 
that it did not repeat. The housewife who bought 
it once, went elsewhere for her next coffee. And 
the reputation which the merchant had built up 
among the housewives of his town for having 
high quality coffee was soon dissipated away. 

When Customers Don’t Come Back 

So the second trip was the last trip that this 
salesman ever made over a territory in which he 
had spent the best ten years of his life. Today he 
is selling insurance on the Pacific coast. He may 
be making more money than he did selling coffee, 
that I do not know, but I do know that his failure 
as a coffee salesman began and ended the day he 
forsook quality for price. 

There is still another objection to a price busi¬ 
ness, which though less immediate in its effect 
on a salesman’s success is quite as important. I 


15 




HOW TO SELL QUALITY 


refer to the demoralizing effect on the business as 
a whole, and particularly its detriorating effect on 
the organization behind the sales force. If your 
house should follow the plan of meeting every 
price cut as it comes along it would not be long 
before there would be no figure for your customer 
to use as a basis of price comparison. In other 
words selling would simmer down into a seesaw 
proposition. You have the lowest price today, and 
your competitor has it tomorrow. The cutting and 
recutting would continue until a point was 
reached where the normal profit required to oper¬ 
ate a business had been absorbed. What would be 
the next step? Either one of two things, get out 
of business or take the profit out of selling or op¬ 
erating costs. In either case you would suffer. 

That is why business men of big vision refuse 
to become a party to any price cutting contest. 
They know that at best it would be but a tempo¬ 
rary advantage, held only until competitors had 
time to pull themselves together for a still deeper 
cut. And they know, too, that permanent success 
can only be built on a quality foundation. A cut 
in price—if out of line with the general market 
trend—will undo a reputation for quality quicker 
than any other one thing. It breeds suspicion. 
Buyers think: “If his stuff were as good as he says 


16 




WHAT QUALITY MEANS TO A SALESMAN 


it is he wouldn’t have to cut the price”. And it is 
logical. 

So the next time you feel tempted to complain 
about the slowness of your house to meet a com¬ 
petitor’s price remember that there is another side 
to the situation other than the one you see. Per¬ 
haps we are a good deal like the little boy who 
wanted the candy. 

Quality Makes Salesmen Possible 

It is not difficult to understand why quality is 
such a gr^at force for success in sales work. Were 
it not for quality there would he no salesmen , as 
we understand the word in its modern sense. If 
every brand of shoes were made to the same speci¬ 
fications, all that a manufacturer would have to do 
would be to send out a price list. If his prices 
were lower than those of his competitors then he 
would get the business. It would be a simple mat¬ 
ter. But the moment one manufacturer decides 
that by using a better grade of leather his shoes 
will give greater satisfaction and he must charge 
more for them, then he must use salesmen 
to explain to the dealers how the higher priced 
shoes will wear longer and make satisfied custom¬ 
ers for him. If the salesman’s explanation is con¬ 
vincing then the dealer will pay the extra price to 


17 










HOW TO SELL QUALITY 


get the better leather in the hopes that his cus¬ 
tomers in turn will be better satisfied. 

What a Salesman Owes to His House 

So you see that quality is synonimous with sat¬ 
isfied customers, and we all know that the prod¬ 
uct which gives the most satisfaction in the long 
run, is the easiest to sell. This thought was ably 
expressed in a saying often credited to Emerson 
that the world will build a path to the door of the 
man who can write a better book, preach a better 
sermon or build a better mouse trap, even though 
he make his home in the woods. As a salesman 
you want to tie up to the house which puts the 
kind of quality into its products that will cause 
people to recognize them as being the standard by 
which all competitive products are judged. 

Never lose sight of that oft forgotten truth 
that a salesman's success is sixth-tenths himself 
and four-tenths his line. If you sell a thing that is 
better than your competitor is selling you may be 
sure that the world will find it out and want it. 
When people start wanting the thing you are sell¬ 
ing the measure of your success depends only on 
your ability to fill positions of greater importance. 


18 




II—The Basis of All 
Quality Sales 

T WO farm wagons stood in a public market. 

Both were loaded with potatoes in bags. A 
woman stopped before the first wagon. 

“How much are potatoes today ?” she asked the 
farmer. 

“Two fifty a bushel” said the farmer. 

“Oh, my” exclaimed the woman, “that is pretty 
high isn’t it? I only paid two dollars for the last.” 

“ ‘Taters has gone up” was the only informa¬ 
tion the grower would give, and that indifferently, 
with a shrug of his shoulders. 

The woman went on to the second wagon and 
asked the same question. But the second farmer’s 
manner was in marked contrast. Instead of reply¬ 
ing indifferently to her question, he said: 

“These are the best potatoes in the market, 
madam. In the first place I raise the kind with 
small eyes, so there will be no waste in peeling; 
potatoes are too high now to peel away. Then I 
sort them by sizes. In each bag you will find a 
large size for boiling and cutting up, and a me¬ 
dium size for baking. The baking size cooks 
quickly, all done at the same time and so saves 


19 








HOW TO SELL QUALITY 


coal or gas, whichever you use. We wash all our 
potatoes clean at home, too. You could put one of 
these bags in your parlor and not soil the carpet 
—and you are not paying for a lot .of dirt. I'm 
getting $3.00 a bushel for them.” 

He sold her two bags at three dollars a bag, in 
spite of the fact that she could have bought po¬ 
tatoes at the next wagon for fifty cents a bag less. 
The second farmer knew the principles of selling 
quality, the first farmer did not. Yet if you were 
to ask the second farmer why his customer so 
willingly paid him more, he would probably tell 
you because his potatoes were worth more. 

How to Paint a Quality Picture 

Whether they really were better, or whether 
he only thought they were better, is hard to say. 
In any event the first farmer could have claimed 
pretty nearly everything for his potatoes that the 
second farmer did. The point we want to make is 
that the woman who bought the potatoes was 
moved by certain definite forces of human nature, 
and these same forces are to be found in every 
quality sale. Therefore it will pay you well, before 
proceeding to analyze the methods used by suc¬ 
cessful quality salesmen, to consider for a mo¬ 
ment what these forces or principles are. 


20 




THE BASIS OF ALL QUALITY SALES 


As every man who has ever sold goods knows, 
there are two avenues of appeal that may be util¬ 
ized in making a sale. One of these is to appeal to 
a man's feeling mind, and the other is to appeal 
to his reasoning mind. 

A man goes into a clothing store with the firm 
determination not to pay more than $50 for a suit 
of clothes. The salesman has him try on a $75 suit 
and tells him that it makes him look like a banker. 
The man pays the extra $25 without hesitation 
because the salesman appealed to his self-pride. 
The buyer’s reasoning mind told him that he could 
get as much wear out of a $50 suit as he could 
from the more expensive suit, but the perfectly 
human desire to look well over-rode his reasoning. 

Why Men Pay More for Quality 

Another man will pay $50 a month for an 
apartment in the city when he could get one just 
as good for $35 in a walk-up building in a less 
fashionable neighborhood. But love of his family, 
a strong emotion, makes him pay more rent than 
he reasons a man with his income ought to pay. 

Mr. Moore is a bookkeeper in a small western 
town. He made up his mind to buy an automobile. 
After careful consideration he decided it would be 
a Ford. His reasoning mind told him that the 


21 









HOW TO SELL QUALITY 


Ford was the best car he could buy for the money 
he had to spend. It would go just as fast as a 
higher priced car. It cost less to run, tires cost 
less, repairs cost less—in fact there was no doubt 
in his mind whatever that the Ford was just the 
car he wanted. 

His Wife Didn’t Take to Flivvers 

But when he told his wife that he was going to 
buy a Ford she objected violently. She didn’t 
know anything about how cheap it was, or how 
many gallons of gasoline it used per mile, or how 
many Ford tires you could buy for the cost of a 
regular tire, but she did know that she would not 
have Mrs. Jones next door (who has a Chevrolet) 
see her jostled around in a flivver. Mr. Moore 
could get his Ford, if he wanted to, but he didn’t 
need to think that she would ever ride in it, and 
what was more she didn’t want it parked in front 
of the house, so there! 

Of course, Mr. Moore made the usual assertion 
that he was the boss and what he wanted to do 
he would do, etc. But just the same he bought a 
Dodge. And again we see how the feeling mind 
overcame the reasoning mind. 

The emotions which govern the feeling mind 
are love of self, love of family, love of friends, 


22 




THE BASIS OF ALL QUALITY SALES 


desire for power, pride, comfort and convenience. 
There are others, but these are the leading ones 
and no quality sale was ever consummated with¬ 
out appealing to one or more of these emotions. 

The Quality-Wanting Emotions 

Price, the only objection a man has to qual¬ 
ity merchandise, exists only in his sense of rea¬ 
soning. You cannot sense or feel price, but you 
can sense and feel the other emotions enumerated. 
As this is a fact, you can set down this principle 
as a safe rule to follow in selling a quality prod¬ 
uct: 

The desire for quality can best be created in the 
mind of a buyer by an appeal to the emotions 
which he senses or feels . 

We have seen from the several illustrations 
previously cited that as a rule our emotions domi¬ 
nate our reason. It therefore follows that if we 
appeal first to these emotions in selling a high 
priced product, it is possible for us to create such 
a strong desire for quality that we can impel in¬ 
vestigation and desire without raising the ques¬ 
tion of price . 

R. L. Wood, now manager of trade sales for 
John Lucas & Company, paint and varnish mak- 


23 




HOW TO SELL QUALITY 


ers, frequently had this experience when he was 
on the road for his company. He tells of how he 
established one of the most satisfactory accounts 
now on that company's books—a hardware job¬ 
ber whom he was very anxious to sell but who 
up to that time had been flirting with “cheaper” 
lines. 


They Never Even Asked the Price 

Through another salesman Mr. Wood arranged 
for a meeting between himself and the entire ex¬ 
ecutive personnel of the company, which had re¬ 
cently been formed by several employees of an 
old established jobber in the same city. In the in¬ 
terview Mr. Wood never mentioned price once, 
but confined himself entirely to the quality of the 
Lucas line, the business-building co-operation 
which the company had to offer, and described 
clearly all the advantages of a business with ideals 
such as these men held becoming associated with 
a concern like Lucas that was so well able to help 
the new concern realize those ideals. 

“The next morning,” Mr. Wood says, “I sub¬ 
mitted the contract to them and they in turn had 
it approved by their attorneys and then signed it. 
None of the men I talked to knew the price of a 
single item in our line until the initial car-load 


24 




THE BASIS OF ALL QUALITY SALES 


order was invoiced to them. The account has been 
on our books for a long while, and in every re¬ 
spect is one of the most satisfactory customers 
we have established during the fourteen years I 
have been connected with John Lucas & Com¬ 
pany.” 


25 




Ill—Laying a Sound 
Foundation 


M ANY of the so-called “quality sales talks” 
used by salesmen sound impressive but as 
Mr. Goldberg would say: “they don't mean any¬ 
thing.” 

A sales manager for one of the big musical in¬ 
strument houses decided that one of the main 
reasons why orders were falling off was because 
his salesmen had forgotten how to put punch into 
their sales talk. So he called his men in off the 
road for a convention. A feature of the conven¬ 
tion was a “sales-down” wherein each man in turn 
was required to sell his proposition to as many 
different dealers who attended the convention by 
special arrangement. The sales manager was to 
pass upon each “sale” and award the honors to 
the man who best succeeded in convincing his 
“prospect” of the superior quality and consequent 
superior money-making advantages of this par¬ 
ticular line of instruments. 

The demonstrations were held in the company's 
school room, at one end of which a dictagraph 
was concealed. This machine recorded every word 
of what was said without the salesman knowing 
that they were being “clocked”. Afterwards the 


26 


LAYING A SECOND FOUNDATION 


sales arguments of each man were transcribed on 
paper. The papers were judged on the basis of the 
number of statements made by the salesman 
which could not just as well be made by a compet¬ 
itor. Results showed that more than half of the 
salesmen had been using a sales talk, which with 
a few minor exceptions, would sell a competing 
line just as well as their own! 

The Cheapest Goods Carry Quality Labels 

The sales manager also was amazed to find that 
in practically every case his salesmen were ding- 
donging the word “quality” at the buyer, quite 
forgetful of the fact that buyers hear so much 
about “quality”, too often from salesmen who are 
selling anything but a quality line, that they have 
sickened of it. In this respect it is just like “best 
made,” “nothing to equal them,” “wonderful buy,” 
etc. Once upon a time these expressions sold 
goods, but they have now lost their cutting edge 
entirely. 

This sales manager told his men, and I will pass 
his tip on to you, never to use the word “quality” 
in your argument at all, but to make the quality 
apparent by inference. He also pointed out the 
importance of emphasizing one dominant quality 
point, and driving that home, rather than scatter- 


27 




HOW TO SELL QUALITY 


ing your effort over a long list of points which 
only jumble up the buyer's mind without leaving 
a lasting impression of quality. The point which 
he urged his men to use as a foundation for the 
sale was the reputation of the house. This he said 
was one quality point that no competitor could 
use. And he is right. 

Quality Is Judged by the House Behind It 

Some of the most successful houses in this coun¬ 
try have been built up and held their leadership 
because their salesmen know the effectiveness of 
what is called “institutional salesmanship.” The 
idea of institutional salesmanship is to sell the 
house before attempting to sell the line. It has 
been demonstrated time after time, by salesmen in 
every line, that quality is mainly measured by the 
reputation of the house behind it, and it there¬ 
fore follows that if you are going to build your 
sale from the foundation up, and not from the 
roof down, you must start by selling the house. 

“When the armistice was signed,” writes B. W. 
Thayer, vice president of the Minneapolis Knit¬ 
ting Works, “we had our first business depres¬ 
sion. We told our salesmen to talk Minneapolis 
Knitting Works; to sell the company rather than 
the line. In other words, we felt that we had es- 


28 




LAYING A SECOND FOUNDATION 


tablished “M” values, and that we would arrive 
at a better end should we leave comparisons out 
of the question, and simply sell the company. 

“That we have been successful is without ques¬ 
tion, as our actual sales this year up to the first 
of July, in dozens, were twenty-five per cent 
greater than the entire year of 1919. 

An Argument Your Competitor Cannot Meet 

“Recently there has been quite a slashing in 
prices by manufacturers who wished to liquidate 
their stocks. Many who had always held to fair 
values cheapened their garments in an effort to 
make lower prices. We endeavored to make gar¬ 
ments even of better value, asking a price that we 
thought was fair. One of the largest department 
stores in the middle west, doing perhaps a busi¬ 
ness of $15,000,000 annually, refused to give one 
of our salesmen an order because he had been of¬ 
fered another trade-marked line at a reduction in 
price of perhaps ten per cent. He could not be 
moved. 

“Six months later the writer made a trip east 
and stopped off to see this particular buyer. I 
talked to him for perhaps two hours. I did not 
in any way offer any comparison of values, nor 
endeavor to cheapen the line he had bought in 


29 




HOW TO SELL QUALITY 


place of ours. I did talk to him about his estab¬ 
lished trade on “M” garments; the satisfaction 
that they had always given to consumers. I asked 
him to call his clerks together and to see if one 
instance might be found where an “M” garment 
had been returned because of dissatisfaction. 

He Was Not There to Sell “Goods” 
“Beyond this I talked the company and the long 
standing policy back of it, telling him that I did 
not want to sell garments, but did want to sell 
him the Minneapolis Knitting Works. That our 
signature was on each garment in the form of the 
“M” trade-mark, and that that trade-mark meant 
just as much on one of our garments as our sig¬ 
nature did on a letter to him or to his company. 
In conclusion I asked him to tell me frankly the 
success he was having with the line he put in in 
place of ours, and he very honestly admitted that 
even though he was a buyer for a store selling to 
the masses, he had made a mistake in displacing 
our line, defending himself on the ground that 
business competition was then so acute that buy¬ 
ers were perhaps overlooking values and buying 
more on the basis of price. The following season 
that buyer came back to our garments stronger 
than ever, and today has a complete department 
of our line.” 


30 




LAYING A SECOND FOUNDATION 


You will occasionally meet a salesman who will 
tell you that they believe in selling themselves 
first and the line whenever it seems convenient. 
Their idea is to arrange things so that their cus¬ 
tomers look to them rather than the house, there¬ 
by making it possible for the salesman to put his 
trade up on the auction block should opportunity 
arise. These men are not deserving of being called 
salesmen. And you will notice that they are di¬ 
vided into two types—young men who don’t know 
any better and older men who are still on the road 
when they ought to be filling executive positions. 
The reason they are not is too obvious to require 
explanation. There is only one way to succeed in 
the business you have embarked upon—and that 
is to find a good company and tie up to it. Let its 
success be your success. It may take a little 
longer but in the long run it is much the surer 
and safer. The man who sells his employer short 
is a hundred times a fool. 

How a $3,000 Account Was Landed 

One of the strongest weapons in meeting price 
competition is the reputation of the house back of 
the product. P. A. Ikerd, sales manager of The 
Nut House, tells of trying to get one of the big 
news companies to handle Nut House salted pea¬ 
nuts. For four years the news company had re- 


31 




HOW TO SELL QUALITY 


fused to touch them, claiming that they could get 
just as good salted peanuts for one-third the price. 
He finally succeeded in getting his product in by 
selling The Nut House so thoroughly to the news 
agent, that price became secondary. This account 
now buys over $3,000 worth of “high priced” pea¬ 
nuts every month from Mr. Ikerd. 

Finally, you cannot successfully sell quality un¬ 
less you thoroughly know your line. If you are a 
wholesale grocery salesman, knowing your line 
means the ability to walk into a customer’s store, 
pick up, say, a walnut, and be able to tell at a 
glance in what country it was grown, whether it 
is of the first quality or not, and about what it is 
worth a pound. You should know something of 
the various grades of tea, where grown, their 
peculiarities of cup flavor, their prices, and so on. 

His Hobby Was How Rubber Is Made 

If you sell tires you ought to be able to tell 
a buyer about the various differences in manufac¬ 
ture that affect the life and character of rubber. 
One salesman, in order to get first hand informa¬ 
tion on this point, even went so far as to take a 
trip to the rubber “belt” in South America. If 
you sell wire rope you should know something 
about important competitive tests that have been 


32 




LAYING A SECOND FOUNDATION 


made, as well as the process of manufacture. Hav¬ 
ing acquired such information use it to prove 
merit in what you are selling, rather than to 
prove that your competitor's goods are without 
merit. Remember that you are a quality salesman 
selling a quality product. 

He Did Not Know So Lost the Sale 

A customer who probably knew that weight had 
something to do with the quality of a desk asked 
a salesman for a furniture house what the weight 
of a certain desk was. The salesman did not know, 
nor did he take the trouble to find out. 

Taking hold of a corner of the desk and lifting 
it slightly he remarked that it was “fairly heavy" 
though. To the salesman the question seemed 
trivial, and one that could be dodged. But he 
didn't know that the customer had just finished 
reading a mail-order catalogue which had stated 
that the desk advertised was especially heavy, and 
that a local dealer would probably ask the same 
price for a lighter one. But the buyer did not tell 
the salesman this. Instead he went out of the 
store without buying, because the salesman did 
not know his business. Had he known his business 
he would have not only known how much the desk 
he was selling weighed but would have, been able 
to tell the buyer the why of the extra weight. 


33 




HOW TO SELL QUALITY 


The well-posted salesman not only understands 
these little points of superiority that put his mer¬ 
chandise into the quality class but he is careful 
to use descriptive phrases that impart a quality 
atmosphere. When a salesman realizes the differ¬ 
ence in sales value between “selected material” 
and “loft-dried hickory”; between “strongest 
wagon ever built” and “our wagons are tested 
with a dead weight of 8,000 pounds”, he has taken 
a big step forward in successfully selling quality. 


34 




IV—Making the Buyer 
Want Quality 

T HE first step in selling quality is to make the 
buyer want quality. You must first unsell 
him on what he has been buying, for unless a man 
is convinced that what he does now, or what he is 
using now, is not right, he will not change. 

Therefore you must sooner or later, and the 
sooner the better, in your canvass reach the deli¬ 
cate point of just what the trouble is with what 
your prospect is already buying. Until you have 
brought your prospect up to the point where he 
wants something better than what he is now buy¬ 
ing or using he will remain indifferent to quality 
arguments. 

In unselling your man on his present ways of 
doing business, or creating in his mind the feeling 
that the present lines he handles are not as good 
as they could be, you will, of course, be careful 
not to antagonize him by implying that you know 
his business better than he does, or that you are 
in any way criticizing his business judgment. 

Illustrating the importance of making the buyer 
want quality before attempting to sell it to him, 
a former president of the American Bronze Cor¬ 
poration, J. W. Watson, once wrote a letter to 


35 


HOW TO SELL QUALITY 


his sales manager. He said he had noticed that 
the men were laying too much stress on the im¬ 
portance of their company and the long list of 
prominent manufacturers who used Non-Gran 
metal, and not enough stress on what the metal 
would do for them. He pointed out that back in 
the old days when he was the sales force there 
were no such arguments to use for the company 
was practically unknown, but neverthless he was 
able to bring home the bacon by carefully think¬ 
ing out his canvass. 

Selling Quality vs. Getting Orders 

“One of the first things my experience taught 
me,” Mr. Watson said in this letter, “was that it 
was useless to tell a prospect how good Non-Gran 
was and why it was good. Many a time have I 
spent a good half-hour or a good hour with 
a man telling him all about Non-Gran quality 
and the ‘whys’ of this quality. After succeeding 
in convincing him of the superior quality of Non- 
Gran he would sit back in his chair and frankly 
admit that Non-Gran was superior to the metal 
he was then using. I would then sit up and get 
ready to take his order, only to be told that the 
metal he was using was really satisfactory for its 
duties and that he would therefore not be war- 


36 




MAKING THE BUYER WANT QUALITY 


ranted in paying a higher price for this superior 
quality which he did not need. 

“Finally, we woke up to the fact that by the 
above method of procedure we were simply but¬ 
ting our heads into stone walls. I convinced all 
we called on that Non-Gran was superior, but I 
got no business. 

It’s Not What It Is, But What It Does 

“Here is the point I want to bring out, and I 
hope I can bring it out clearly enough and strong¬ 
ly enough so that each of our men will get it in 
his head and get it there firmly that it will never 
for a moment jump out. Before you can make the 
buyer want Non-Gran metal you have to make 
them want Non-Gran quality. 

“We can't make our prospect want a better 
quality unless we can show him that a better qual¬ 
ity of bearings will help him. The minute we do 
show him and convince him that a better quality 
of bearings will help him he will not be content 
until he finds some better quality. It is then, and 
not until then, that we should take up the steps in 
convincing him of Non-Gran's superior qualities. 
Our prospect will be keenly interested in listening 
to all we have to say and show about Non-Gran's 
quality after he has been made to want superior 


37 




HOW TO SELL QUALITY 


quality, but his interest in quality will only be 
passive if he first isn't made to want additional 
quality. 

He Took the Machine Apart 

“There may be many ways to make a prospect 
want to install finer quality bearing in the ma¬ 
chines he is producing, but I am frank to admit 
that so far I have only discovered one. This way, 
and I can also state that it has been a very suc¬ 
cessful way, consists in an analysis of the pros¬ 
pect's machine. Pull his machine apart, piece by 
piece. Analyze each of those pieces to determine 
its probable life with relation to all of the other 
pieces. The prospect becomes very much inter¬ 
ested and absorbed in this process. The object of 
the discussion is not to sell him bearing bronze, 
but to work out with him a way to increase the 
first life of the machines he is putting on the mar¬ 
ket. Let us say, for example, that the prospect is 
a manufacturer of engine lathes. 

“Our first question will be to ask him if he 
would be interested in increasing the first life of 
every engine lathe he turned out—increase the 
number of productive hours which this lathe 
would give before it had to be torn to pieces for 
overhauling. He would be a queer sort of human 


38 




MAKING THE BUYER WANT QUALITY 


being if he were to say ‘No' and kick us out of 
the door. Ninety-nine prospects out of a hundred 
will show that they are real human beings and 
say ‘Sure/ That then is our cue to sit down and 
‘go to it/ 


Finding the Weak Link in the Chain 

“We now proceed something like this: ‘Well, 
Mr. Prospect, there is only one way in which it 
will be possible to increase the first life of your 
lathes and that way is to find out what part, or 
what parts, of all the hundreds of parts which go 
to make up the lathe, are the first to give out in 
service and thus require a shutting down of the 
lathe for repairs or renewals. In other words, Mr. 
Prospect, there may be some parts in your lathe 
which will stay perfectly good for ten or fifteen 
years and other parts which will only stay good 
for one or two years. It is obvious, Mr. Prospect, 
that to increase the quality of the ten or fifteen 
year parts would not increase the first life of the 
lathe by as much as one second. What we want to 
find is the part, or parts, which now give out first. 
If we can increase the life of that part five min¬ 
utes we will increase the life of the whole machine 
by that same five minutes. If we can increase the 
life of that part by one year we can increase the 


39 




HOW TO SELL QUALITY 


first life of the whole machine by just that one 
year/ 

“So far, our prospect is absolutely with us— 
the above facts are too obvious for any argument 
or disagreement. 

“It is now time for us to start tearing his ma¬ 
chine down, piece by piece. First, let us tackle 
the base or the legs of the lathe. He will agree 
in a minute that this base or these legs will be 
just as good at the end of twenty years as they 
are the day they are first set up. 

Adding a Year to Its Life 

“We, in this way, go over all the pieces making 
up the machine, lathe, drill press, electric motor, 
printing press, automobile or what not, until we 
find the part or parts, which, logically, in service 
give out first. This part may be found to be a 
trigger in some automatic feature of the machine. 
In this case the prospect should give his attention 
to bettering the quality and lengthening the life 
of this trigger. By so doing, he will thus increase 
the first life of the entire machine. In this case 
we cannot help him increase the first life of the 
machine and therefore have nothing to offer. 

“If, however, the analysis shows that some 
wear-subjected parts is the 'weak brother/ then 


40 




MAKING THE BUYER WANT QUALITY 


we certainly can help him and he will be keen to 
be helped. He will then want better quality in this 
bearing part because he will have sufficient busi¬ 
ness instinct to know that by spending one or two 
dollars may be only fifty or sixty cents for in¬ 
creased quality in this part he will be adding hun¬ 
dreds of productive hours to the entire machine.” 

Mr. Watson's letter has been cited here at 
length in spite of the wide gulf between what you 
sell and bearing metal, because it shows exactly 
how one sales force successfully applied the prin¬ 
ciple of making the buyer want quality before at¬ 
tempting to sell him quality. If this important 
principle is the only suggestion which you are 
able to carry out from these pages you will have 
made a big step forward toward your goal of be¬ 
ing a quality salesman. 

People Don't Want Cheap Things— 

They Only Think They Do 

Incidentally, E. G. Anderson, the man to whom 
this letter was written as sales manager, caught 
the idea so well, and was able in turn to so im¬ 
pregnate his salesmen with it, that a most re¬ 
markable stimulus was given to the sales of his 
company. It is not surprising, therefore, when 
the time came to appoint a successor to Mr. Wat- 


41 




HOW TO SELL QUALITY 


son, the president, that Mr. Anderson was selected 
for the post. It is just one more example of a 
salesman who reached the top by thoroughly mas¬ 
tering the principles that underly selling a quality 
product. 

“A merchant's natural instinct to buy as cheap¬ 
ly as possible often throws us off the right track 
and leads us along the line of least resistance,” 
says L. H. Thompson of the Detroit selling force of 
the National Cash Register Company. “Very often 
a merchant will say that he wants a cheap cash 
register. We take his word for it and show him 
a cheap second hand one, which in many cases is 
not in keeping with the size of his business or the 
needs of his store. I have learned to absolutely 
disregard a merchant's request for a cheap ma¬ 
chine. 


A Man Sold on Quality Stays Sold 

“I first find out his needs, and then endeavor 
to show him how the ‘cheapest' machine would by 
all means eventually become the ‘dearest'.” Mr. 
Thompson has put his finger on a weak point of 
many salesmen. They would rather make a quick, 
easy sale, than to take a little more time, and con¬ 
summate a sale that would mean more to both 
them and to the buyer. When a buyer realizes 


42 




MAKING THE BUYER WANT QUALITY 


that you are going to some trouble to find out how 
many clerks he has, the amount of business han¬ 
dled, and other details so as to be able to make a 
recommendation of the machine that is actually 
suited to his needs he is apt to forget ‘cheap ma¬ 
chines' and buy a machine that is a credit to his 
store. 

Appeal to a Buyer’s Bigger Self 

During the recent crisis a great many business 
heads forsook their mahogany desks and went out 
on the road and sold goods. Time after time the 
head of the business, or his sales manager, has 
gone into a salesman’s territory and taken out 
business which the salesman “positively knew” 
wasn’t there to be taken. The salesman alibied 
himself by saying that it was the title on the card 
that did it. But such was not the case. It was be¬ 
cause the bigger business man approached the 
problem from its bigger side. He doesn’t talk 
about such petty things as a few cents in price, 
but on the contrary he shows how the purchase 
of this article will solve some problem that has to 
do with the life of the business. 

J. W. Wiley, secretary of the Vitrolite Company, 
relates an instance that well illustrates what I 
mean. Vitrolite is used for table tops, toilet parti- 


43 




HOW TO SELL QUALITY 


tions and the like. It is considerably higher in 
price than competitive materials. In the case of 
this particular sale the Vitrolite salesman's price 
was $5,000 against the lowest competitor's price 
of $2,600. The competitive material looked like 
Vitrolite so far as the eye was concerned, but un¬ 
like Vitrolite it could be written upon with a pen¬ 
cil. The Vitrolite salesman closed the sale by sell¬ 
ing the school board, who were buying it for toilet 
partitions, that they were as much responsible for 
the school children's moral welfare as they were 
for their physical welfare, as indicated by the de¬ 
sire for sanitary toilet rooms. He told them how it 
was possible for one child to corrupt the morals 
of hundreds of children by writing obscene matter 
on toilet room partitions. They knew what the 
salesman said to be true and installed Vitrolite 
partitions. 


44 




V—How to Create a Quality 
Atmosphere 

H AVE you ever noticed the advertisements for 
Community silverware? 

This advertising has been held by many author¬ 
ities to be some of the best “copy” appearing in 
current magazines. Yet when you come to analyze 
the ad you find that the text when taken by itself 
is quite commonplace. So far as the illustration of 
the product itself goes, the design is not a great 
deal better, one way or the other, than a host of 
other designs advertised by other houses. What is 
there then about the advertisements for Commun¬ 
ity plate that makes them so effective? It is the 
atmosphere of quality which the builder of the ad¬ 
vertisement has woven into it. 

In one piece of copy, for example, he has laid 
the silverware on the tastily set table of a leader 
of New York's four hundred. In doing so he 
adroitly establishes the point that plated table 
silver is used on the best of tables, and the associ¬ 
ation of the silver with the priceless lunch cloths, 
rare chinaware and rich table settings lifts it out 
of the “just as good” class and gives it an atmos¬ 
phere of quality that cannot be denied. 


45 


HOW TO SELL QUALITY 


In another advertisement a lone table spoon is 
laid on a rare piece of lace and reproduced as a 
page advertisement in the magazines. The femi¬ 
nine eye quickly appraises the value of the lace, 
and subconsciously associates the lace and the sil¬ 
verware. Thus an impression of quality is reg¬ 
istered by the simple expedient of using an article 
of known quality to create the impression of qual¬ 
ity in another product. 

This Salesman Had a Simple Plan 

It is not practical, of course, for a salesman to 
take rare bits of lace valued at thousands of dol¬ 
lars with him on the road to use in giving a qual¬ 
ity atmosphere to his selling talk, but there are 
many things which you can do to produce the 
same effect. 

A salesman selling Chandler automobiles made 
a list of a dozen mechanical features found in 
three cars selling at over $5,000 which were also 
found in the Chandler but were not found in any 
other car selling at the Chandler price. For ex¬ 
ample, the Bosch magneto, found in the Chandler 
and the Pierce Arrow, the noiseless chain drive 
found in the Chandler and the Packard, etc; When 
his tabulation was completed he cut out from the 
catalogues of the respective cars illustrations that 


46 




HOW TO CREATE A QUALITY ATMOSPHERE 


brought out each point, and pasted them in a book 
side by side with a similar illustration of the 
Chandler. In selling a prospective buyer on Chan¬ 
dler quality, the salesman would open his binder 
with its convincing illustrations, and turn the 
pages one by one as his sales talk progressed. 

The “Birds of a Feather” Plan 

A grocery salesman establishes a quality atmos¬ 
phere about a line of preserves that he sells by 
showing the dealer photographs of a window dis¬ 
play in one of Park & Tilford's New York stores 
where his preserves had been given a prominent 
position. 

William Maxwell, in an article in Collier's, tells 
how a salesman for a high priced saw created a 
quality atmosphere upon aproaching the buyer. 
“A good many years ago,” writes Mr. Maxwell, “a 
friend of mine who knows the underworld pretty 
well introduced me to some of its more or less 
celebrated characters. One of them, a confidence 
man, said to me: ‘It's all a mistake to salve a man 
when you want to get him hooked. You want to 
act like you don't think he has got the brains or 
the coin to go through with the proposition. Put 
it up to him so he'll have to hook himself in order 


47 




HOW TO SELL QUALITY 


to show you that your opinion of him ain't high 
enough.' 

“This roughly phrased fragment of philosophy 
did not make much of an impression upon me un¬ 
til I began to test it upon myself. Then I realized 
that an almost certain way to gain my attention 
would be to imply the lack of some quality in me 
which I believed myself to possess. Of course, if 
the implication were made in an offensive form, 
my antagonism as well as my attention would be 
aroused. Evidently the implication would be very 
faint; just enough to make a man concentrate hts 
mind upon you—if for no other purpose than to 
prove to you that he is a bigger or a more clever 
man than you seem to realize." 

How to Make the Buyer Come to You 

Acting on this line of reasoning, Mr. Maxwell 
goes on to say that he proceeded to frame a ques¬ 
tion which would, without giving offense, imply 
that he didn't think the dealer he was talking to 
had an organization that was capable of a high- 
grade, high-priced saw. Invariably the simple 
question: “Have you an organization that can sell 
a high grade saw?" did the work, as will be seen 
from three natural answers which a dealer would 
in all probability make to the question. 


48 ' 




HOW TO CREATE A QUALITY ATMOSPHERE 


If he was already selling quality saws the buyer 
would reply: “We’re doing it now.” To which 
reply Mr. Maxwell would simply say: “I guess I 
didn’t make it clear to you the kind of a saw I 
mean.” And the buyer, completely disarmed would 
ask: “Well, what kind do you mean?” 

“We Are Satisfied With What We Have” 

Or the buyer might reply to Mr. Maxwell’s ap¬ 
proach: “We are handling the very best saw on 
the market now.” 

“I’m talking about a different kind of a saw.” 

“What kind are you talking about?” 

The dealer who was not handling a quality saw 
will probably come back with: “What we have sat¬ 
isfies us.” The reply to this is: “But your organi¬ 
zation could sell a high grade saw, couldn’t it?” 
(Which brings the buyer back to where he was in 
the first place.) 

The bearing of the salesman, his address, even 
the clothes he wears, are factors in creating an at¬ 
mosphere of quality for a product. In the same 
way that prospective buyers of Community silver¬ 
ware received an impression of quality from the 
setting of the advertisement, so the buyer of your 
merchandise receives an impression of quality 
from your personal appearance. 


49 




HOW TO SELL QUALITY 


To be successful in selling quality you must live 
up to the standards of excellence set by your com¬ 
pany. To most of your customers you are the com¬ 
pany. Make it your business to see that the asso¬ 
ciation of your goods and your appearances in the 
customer's mind is that of quality. 

This does not mean that you must wear expen¬ 
sive clothes and be dressed in the latest Fifth 
Avenue style. Indeed, over-dressing is just as un¬ 
wise as careless dressing. But it does mean that 
you should make it a point to get your shoes 
shined every morning, keep your clothes neatly 
pressed, and your linen clean and well chosen. 
Never forget that a gentleman is judged by his 
linen. You cannot expect your customers to treat 
you as a gentleman if you have the ear marks of 
a second rater. 


50 




VI—Getting Your Price 

T> Y itself , an article is neither good or bad, long 
-D or short, warm or cold, hard or soft. 

Quality can only be shown by comparing it with 
something else called a standard, an average or 
some other similar thing. 

This is a fundamental principle of salesmanship 
which is sometimes referred to as the Einstein 
theory of relativity. A very good illustration of 
the law of relativity is cited by Dr. A. Holmes, 
president of Drake University. “Fifty degrees is 
cold in the fall, warm in the spring,” says Dr. 
Holmes. “One traveler coming down a mountain 
strips off his coat in a lather of perspiration and 
meets another coming up shivering cold. 

“Preserves are sweet if you have just eaten a 
pickle, sour if you have just eaten ice cream. 

“Place one hand in hot water and the other in 
cold water, then place both in water of the same 
temperature and it will feel cold to one hand and 
warm to the other. Which is it, hot or cold ? The 
answer depends on relativity.” 

So you see that the quality assigned by a buyer 
to any fact or thing or condition will be deter¬ 
mined by what has gone before and especially by 
what has gone just before. The identical quality 

5l' 


HOW TO SELL QUALITY 


of what you sell may be poor in the eyes of a man 
who has been buying a better quality or it may 
be better in the eyes of a man who has been buy¬ 
ing an inferior quality. Therefore it is necessary 
for you to take quality from its isolation and sur¬ 
round it with other facts which will serve as a 
basis for measurement. When you do this, a price 
which otherwise might seem prohibitive immedi¬ 
ately dwindles until it seems of little consequence 
compared to the value you offer. 

An Order Worth Taking Is Worth 
Taking Right 

One salesman who used this principle with 
marked success in selling aluminum goods, was G. 
D. Colburn, now general manager of the Dilver 
Manufacturing Company. Mr. Colburn realized 
that he could not obtain full success in his work 
unless he sold large orders. The salesmen who 
were just getting by were the salesmen who sold 
only fill-in numbers to the housewife. He reasoned 
that it was almost as easy to sell a woman a com¬ 
plete outfit as it was to sell her a few items, pro¬ 
vided the sales presentation was worked out to 
overcome her resistance to price. It was not much 
of a trick to get a woman to want a pantry filled 
with clean, white aluminum utensils, but she hesi¬ 
tated at paying the extra price to get the quality. 


52 




GETTING YOUR PRICE 


When the price objection came up Mr. Colburn 
would say: “Mrs. Smith, this piano of yours must 
have cost at least $500. How often do you use it? 
Every other day, or perhaps twice a week? You 
may consider it a satisfactory investment at that. 
Then there is that Victrola over there—you must 
have paid two hundred for that and another hun¬ 
dred for records. How often do you use that? And 
that expensive set of books — do you get your 
money’s worth from them?” 

How to “Fade-out” a Big Price 

Mrs. Smith being human is thus placed in the 
position where she has to justify an expenditure 
that is not essential to her existence. She hastens 
to explain to the salesman the numerous pleasures 
and advantages of having a piano and a victrola 
in her home. Compared to the advantages she is 
able to cite the several hundred dollars thus in¬ 
vested seems small indeed. When she has had her 
say, the salesman says: 

“Mrs. Smith, you are to be complimented on 
your progressive ideas. As you say we are only on 
this earth a few years at best. While we are here 
we ought to give ourselves all the pleasure we 
can. Now, your kitchenware is something that 
you use every day of your life for an important 
purpose. Proper cooking is the very foundation 


53 




HOW TO SELL QUALITY 


of good health. A hundred dollars would be a 
mighty small amount for such an investment as 
compared with other expenditures on equipment 
not nearly so essential, and which you use much 
less frequently.” 

The big trouble with most of us is that we get 
an idea into our heads that our customers won’t 
pay the price, and feeling that way, it is not at all 
surprising that they won’t. Let this fact sink in: 
There is no such thing as a customer who won't 
pay the price if the salesman knows how to sell 
quality . 

He Knew They Were Too High Priced 

A very good illustration of this truism is re¬ 
vealed in the experience of a Wooltex salesman. 
A Wooltex dealer had recently asked permission 
to return a number of high priced Vanity suits 
which had been sent to him for his annual style 
show on the grounds that the garments were too 
high priced for his trade. The salesman in whose 
territory this dealer was located had heard that 
old chestnut hundreds of times before. He knew 
that when a dealer talked about prices being too 
high for his trade that the trouble was with the 
dealer and not with the trade. So he paid him a 
visit. “Give me a chance,” said he to the dealer, 


54 




GETTING YOUR PRICE 


“and I’ll demonstrate to you that there is just as 
much demand as ever by your trade for quality 
merchandise.” 

So the dealer, with nothing to lose and much to 
gain, gave him a chance. 

The Salesman Went Behind the Counter 

Pretty soon a woman came into the store to buy 
a suit. Without making the mistake of prema¬ 
turely asking her how much she wanted to pay 
for it, the Wooltex salesman had her try on one 
of the most expensive garments in the line—a 
beautifully embroidered tricotine model. It fitted 
the customer to perfection. She was delighted 
with it. 

So as to emphasize the beauty and elegance of 
this garment, the Wooltex salesman showed her 
next one of the lower priced suits, a simple serge 
model. But once she had seen herself in the first 
garment she could not be satisfied with anything 
else. She was shown one or two other Vanity suits 
so that she should not be limited in her choice, but 
she agreed that no matter what it cost she must 
have the better suit. 

And she bought it, paying nearly twice as much 
as the dealer claimed the average woman would 
spend on a suit this year. 


55 




HOW TO SELL QUALITY 


'‘All right,” you’ll say. “But she’s an excep¬ 
tion.” That’s the very point. How can you tell 
which buyers are the exceptions, which the aver¬ 
age, or in fact how much the average customer is 
willing to pay unless you do a little experimenting 
in salesmanship? 

When the buyer raises price objections it is 
poor salesmanship to take the objection too seri¬ 
ously. Above all avoid becoming involved in an 
argument, and don’t ever challenge the buyer by 
directly disagreeing with him. Remember that 
when you win an argument you are more than 
likely to lose the sale. 

In many cases, depending of course, on the type 
of man you are dealing with, an indirect story, 
told in a good natured way will often knock the 
props from under a price objection better than a 
half hour’s labored conversation. Here is a story 
that one salesman uses to refute price objections 
that may suggest something to you: 

How One Salesman Belittles Price 

“Once upon a time there was a man who bought 
an unknown brand of clothes at $20 and figured 
he had made a wonderful buy. At the same time 
he was after a $5,000 a year job. You guessed it. 
The man who was doing the hiring got the im- 


56 




GETTING YOUR PRICE 


pression that the man who was after the job was 
a failure. Now how much did the clothes cost— 
twenty dollars or $5,020 ?” 

To do the work a story of this kind must be 
snappy. If it is drawn out it will kill the action 
in your canvass and only serve to accentuate the 
price difficulty. 

It may not be out of place to say here, that this 
holds true in all other phases of selling. There is 
all together too much conversation in the average 
sales solicitation. Get over the idea that you have 
to talk your man into buying. This can be 
done, but such sales are mostly unsatisfactory. 
They breed cancellations and return goods. The 
order that stays sold is the order that the buyer 
has sold to himself . The secret of getting buyers 
to sell themselves is to ask questions. 

The Purchasing Agent Backed Down 

There is a story in a book of Hindu philosophy 
about an old teacher who had a pupil that was one 
of the “show-me” kind. He was filled with doubts 
and raised many questions. But the old man an¬ 
swered none. He just sat there in silence. By de¬ 
grees the doubts of the younger man faded and 
vanished. The old man’s attitude did in a few sec¬ 
onds what hours of oratory and sledge-hammer 
proof would never have done. 


57 




HOW TO SELL QUALITY 


A sales talk that simply uses trickery to keep 
the buyer off the price question is not properly 
planned. The buyer’s first thought is, “How much 
does it cost?” To steer him off the question 
may convey the impression that even you believe 
the price is too high. With a view toward properly 
handling this situation, G. Gale Signore, who has 
successfully sold highest quality products for 
twenty years, uses a plan that effectively puts the 
price in the background. 

Making the Buyer Forget to Ask Price 

In illustrating his methods, he relates the story 
of an Iowa buyer who recently came to Chicago to 
trade, stopping in Signore’s office to purchase a 
few vegetables to replace cans that had been sold 
from his shelves. Some months previously this 
buyer had purchased the store and the Blue Label 
vegetables were in the stock, although he felt it 
was not worth while carrying such high priced 
products as a rule. 

He first told the buyer about the middle-aged 
and elderly women who were employed for peeling 
the peaches in their factory, pointing out that the 
beautiful appearance of most canned peaches was 
obtained by picking them while green and peeling 
them with a lye solution. 


58 




GETTING YOUR PRICE 


This brought him to a point which food prod¬ 
ucts salesmen claim is one of the most difficult ob¬ 
stacles to encounter in selling high quality 
peaches like the Blue Label brand. Their appear¬ 
ance is very much against them. The peaches 
have a “scrubby” appearance. Appearance must 
be sacrificed to get the flavor. So true is this that 
the buyer must be prepared for the shock ob¬ 
tained upon opening a can of Blue Label peaches. 
While this would seem to be the most objection¬ 
able point of the product, Signore has succeeded 
in turning it into one of his strongest selling 
points. 

Having prepared the mind of the buyer, and 
caused the buyer to want to taste the peach, he 
unwrapped a small fibre dish and fibre spoon, 
opened the can and placed a couple of slices on the 
dish. This avoids the usual method of messing 
around in the can with a pen knife. 

The Iowa buyer was perfectly satisfied with the 
product. But he took a final fling at his original 
theory that Blue Label products cost too much 
and he did not feel that he could handle them, 
stating he thought they would not sell. Signore 
then said: 

“If the fruit cost you a dollar a can and you 
could put your profit on top of that and sell it, 


59 




HOW TO SELL QUALITY 


what would you care how much it cost? All you 
are interested in is the profit you are going to 
make on it and the future business it is going to 
build for you. The lady who buys three cans of 
cheap peaches and finds one of them or all three 
of them not so tasty as they might be, is going to 
be peeved at herself for buying them and peeved 
at you as well. You may not lose her as a cus¬ 
tomer, but she will not have any more desire for 
that product. On the other hand, if she is sold 
one of these cans, she will not stop buying them. 
And as to whether they will sell, your competitors 
all around you are selling them and the fruits are 
being sold all over Chicago in face of the country's 
greatest competition.” 

The result was that this plan, which is followed 
by most of the Curtice Brothers Company sales¬ 
men, sold this buyer just as it has hundreds of 
others. It sold the buyer so thoroughly that he 
said he felt he could easily sell many of the 
peaches, for example, by merely telling the cus¬ 
tomer how the elderly women peeled them just as 
mother used to do. He placed a big order for fruit 
in addition to the vegetable order, without know¬ 
ing or caring what the price of many of the items 
in the shipment was to be. 


60 




VII—Making a Big Price 
Seem Small 

TN “easing” a high price to a close-fisted buyer 
-■* it is often well to use percentages. Saunders 
Norvell tells of a man who had suddenly acquired 
a large fortune and decided to build a fine house. 
This man was just the rough type of business man. 
He did not care very much about art, literature or 
music. The wife, however, was much more cul¬ 
tivated than her husband. She had aspirations. 
When they decided to build a fine house she read 
up quite a little on architecture. She talked to 
architects. She read some of the magazines in re¬ 
gard to the interior decoration of homes. 

This man and his wife called at the hardware 
house and the husband said: “We came to buy 
some locks and hinges for our house; also some 
window latches. You have the specifications— 
what will the outfit cost?” 

The salesman who was the late John Hall of the 
Simmons Hardware Company understood his 
business thoroughly. He sized up the situation at 
a glance, and asked the husband and wife if they 
would not be seated while he talked to them a 
little while on the subject of builder’s hardware 
from the standpoint of interior decoration. He 


61 


HOW TO SELL QUALITY 


illustrated his talk by showing them certain de¬ 
signs of hardware. He compared some of these 
designs with the ordinary and every-day thing in 
locks and hinges. He called their attention to the 
total value of their house—to the large amounts 
they were paying interior decorators and especi¬ 
ally emphasized the fact that the bill for the hard¬ 
ware for their house would be a very small per¬ 
centage of the total value. 

He Sold Art—Not Hardware 

The wife, of course, was very much interested 
because she knew something of the subject. The 
husband himself allowed his cigar to go out and 
he was also impressed by the difference between 
simply having locks and hinges for a door as com¬ 
pared with having metal work that would be an 
object of beauty as well as utility; but after 
listening for some thirty minutes, he became 
impatient and said—-“Well, I’ve enjoyed all this 
talk very much but what I want to know is what 
this hardware is going to cost.” By this time, 
however, he come more or less under the spell of 
the salesman. 

He had seen gold and silver-plated hardware. 
He had admired the beauties of cut-glass knobs. 
He saw there was a real difference between cut- 


62 




MAKING A BIG PRICE SEEM SMALL 


glass and porcelain and gold-plate and japan- 
work. Besides that the salesman had made a very 
favorable personal impression. He turned to the 
husband and remarked—“My dear sir, you have 
an entire misconception of what I am doing. I 
am not selling you hardware. I am selling you 
high art!” 

$3,000 Seems a Lot—3% Seems Little 

The husband gasped but smiled grimly. He 
saw the point. Then the salesman said gently— 
“To carry out your interior scheme of decoration 
in an artistic way will cost about $3,000. As the 
contract for your house amounts to $100,000 you 
will note that this is only 3% of the total cost of 
the building. 

Now, if the salesman in this case had said right 
in the beginning: “The hardware for your house 
will cost $3,000”—the chances are he would have 
lost the sale. The wife was with him but it was 
necessary for him to convert the husband. The 
husband had never before in his life bought fancy 
hardware, so he had no idea of what it cost but 
he was an intelligent man and he saw that it 
would be absurd to have cheat) hardware in mag¬ 
nificently decorated rooms. He was convinced 
that it would be absurd, for instance, to have 


63 




HOW TO SELL QUALITY 


hardware in a room decorated in the style of Louis 
XIV with porcelain knobs and japanned escutch¬ 
eons. He was educated to the fact that there were 
period designs in hardware as well as in wall 
decorations. 

Eliminating First Cost Objections 

Still another commonly used plan which has 
possibilities is to keep the price in the background 
until after the profit-making qualities have been 
thoroughly explained to the buyer. Then when 
the buyer asks the price answer it, Yankee fash¬ 
ion, with a question. 

There was a Montana merchant who had just 
passed through four years of crop failures and 
the salesman was selling him a cabinet to con¬ 
tain his biscuits and cookies. 

The merchant had become thoroughly enthused 
with the cabinet and its possibiities; the salesman 
fully realized that had he quoted him a price the 
sale would not be made. 

So when the merchant started to ask the price, 
the salesman said, “I will show you just what this 
cabinet costs you. Mr. Gerber, do you feel in your 
own mind that this cabinet would increase your 
business $50.00 a month?” “No, I do not.” “Do 
you feel it would increase your business $30.00?” 


64 





MAKING A BIG PRICE SEEM SMALL 


No, he did not. “Would it increase your business 
$25.00 ?” He still doubted it. “Would it increase 
your business $20.00?” “Yes,” he said, “I believe 
the cabinet would increase my business $20.00 
a month.” 

A Flat Quotation Would Have Killed the Sale 

“Very well then, Mr. Gerber that cabinet will 
really cost you nothing. Your increased busi¬ 
ness will pay for it if you will sell $15.00 per 
month more cookies and biscuits from the recep¬ 
tacle than you have sold before. This is $5.00 a 
month under your own estimate.” 

The cabinet, as a silent salesman, paid its own 
way. Naming the price of $75.00 to a man with 
four years of crop failures, would have made it 
next to impossible to have sold him. By following 
this plan this salesman has sold in the neighbor¬ 
hood of twenty-five cabinets the first month over 
his territory. This shows that by the proper word¬ 
ing of the sales talk the sting of the price can be 
taken out. 

On the other hand many successful salesmen 
believe that it is poor salesmanship to appear 
afraid of your price. They prefer to come out with 
it boldly and courageously at the very outset of the 
sales talk as though it were your best talking 


65 




HOW TO SELL QUALITY 


point. The star salesman for The Measuregraph 
Company does this. He sells a machine priced at 
$175. That looks big to the average merchant for 
such a small instrument—which is just exactly 
how the salesman wants it to look. The first 
thought that comes into the buyer's mind is what 
makes it cost so much, and this question the sales¬ 
man proceeds to answer. When he has finished, 
the numerous things which the machine will do 
for the merchant so over-shadow its cost that the 
high price objection is completely removed. 

Dodge But Don't Seem to Be Dodging 

This salesman contends that if you follow the 
usual custom of leaving the price until the last 
you will bring your man up to the point where he 
is just about ready to sign up and throw a bomb¬ 
shell into the whole proposition when you spring 
the $175 price. That there is some truth to his 
contention is demonstrated by the fact in an or¬ 
ganization trained to leave the price to the last, 
he has been a consistent as well as a spectacular 
producer of business. 

Whether it is best to “ease the price to a buyer" 
or set the price on a pedestal and point to it with 
pride is a matter which you must decide for your¬ 
self. Your personality, your customer's outlook, 


66 




MAKING A BIG PRICE SEEM SMALL 


and many other conditions must be considered. 
One salesman, for many years a leader in the Y 
& E organization says: “If I think that a custom¬ 
er's mind will be free by quoting the price early 
in the interview I most certainly would do so. If 
on the other hand I feel that the mention of price 
might produce a premature adverse decision I 
would side-step. In selling cement hardeners the 
price was a serious question. It usually came up 
early in the interview, long before I had an oppor¬ 
tunity to prove the superior profit making quality 
of the product. I overcame the obstacle by quot¬ 
ing a price of so many cents a square foot, which 
of course was a small sum and usually satisfied 
him for the moment." As a general rule in hand¬ 
ling price it is best to dodge it at the beginning of 
the interview provided you can do so without giv¬ 
ing your customer the impression you are dodg¬ 
ing. The common practice of telling a customer 
that you will come to the price by and by is not 
to be commended, in spite of the fact that so 
many salesmen are using it. 


67 




VIII—Price Objections as 
Talking Points 

I N disposing of price objections it must be borne 
in mind that they are of two kinds—the real 
objection and the excuse. 

The last mentioned variety is very likely to 
show itself at the beginning of the sale. It is the 
outward expression of the natural perversity in 
human nature which makes us instinctively op¬ 
pose everything, no matter how helpful or valu¬ 
able it may really be. Business men are secretly 
afraid of being “done”, and self-preservation has 
created this habit just as nature makes us close 
our eyes unconsciously when danger threatens. 

The best way to proceed in such cases is to dis¬ 
regard the excuse and play on the prospective 
buyer's curiosity. It is the one faculty that is more 
powerful in its operation than his natural per¬ 
versity. 

It is a simple matter to classify these stock ex¬ 
cuses and prepare replies for each of them which 
will arouse a man's curiosity. In this way you 
can get his attention, the first step in making a 
sale. 

In planning your replies to these stock excuses, 


68 


PRICE OBJECTIONS AS TALKING POINTS 


however, bear in mind that there are two kinds of 
attention—favorable and unfavorable. 

There are salesmen who think it is clever, when 
the prospect brings up a stock excuse, to make a 
smart answer. A hardware salesman traveling 
for one of the big Eastern houses follows the plan 
of “kidding” the objector. When a dealer tells 
him his line is too high priced the salesman slaps 
the dealer on the back and knowingly replies: 
“Sure it is, the law of compensation is still work¬ 
ing, isn’t it?” 

Don’t Side Track the Buyer 

Such tactics may occasionally succeed, but in 
the long run smart salesmanship is a mistake. It 
doesn’t pay. It only leaves the buyer up in the air 
and takes him off the mental track which you 
have laid for him. The right kind of a reply will 
gain attention and at the same time push the 
prospect in the direction ivhich you wish him to 
go. 

The sincere objection to price is usually en¬ 
countered after the buyer has been carried 
through the stages of attention and desire. It is 
caused by a state of deliberation in which the 
buyer’s feelings are drawing him in one direction 


69 




HOW TO SELL QUALITY 


but his brain and natural conservation as a busi¬ 
ness man pulls him in another. 

When an objection of this sort is encountered 
use it to help make the sale. Do not be content 
with merely answering the question. It can just 
as easily be turned into a reason for buying, but 
it must be done without antagonizing or boring 
your man. Ask certain questions in reply to the ob¬ 
jection which can be answered by the prospect 
only in a certain way, thereby giving you entire 
control of the interview. 

“Qualifying” Quality Prospects 

A Hussman refrigerator salesman meets the 
bona-fide price objection by asking the butcher if 
he is in business to stay or if he is going to sell 
out within a few months. The butcher usually 
answers one way or the other. If he is going to 
sell out, then there is no use of the salesman's 
wasting any further time on him. If he says that 
he is in business to stay, which most butchers are, 
then the salesman says: 

“Now, Mr. Brown, I want to ask you a question 
and I want you to answer it frankly. Across the 
street are two buildings. One is a brick flat build¬ 
ing and the other a frame dwelling. Suppose I 
owned both of those buildings. If I could make 


70 




PRICE OBJECTIONS AS TALKING POINTS 


you a proposition whereby with a slightly higher 
first payment you could make enough from the 
rent of the brick building to meet your payments 
and put a tidy sum in the bank every month, you 
would consider the brick building a much better 
buy than the frame building wouldn't you? 

Who Wants to Buy a Question Mark? 

“And you would buy the brick building in a 
minute, whereas you would hesitate a long time 
before buying the frame building, even though it 
only cost one-fifth as much, wouldn't you ? 

“Of course, you would, any business man would, 
because when he buys the frame building he buys 
a question mark. He has no way of knowing how 
many hundreds of dollars he will have to spend 
every year to keep it in repair. He doesn't know 
when the foundations will rot out, or the shingles 
begin to come out. It is built of cheap materials, 
and it is a cheap building. But with the brick 
building it is different.” 

With an appreciaton of quality established in 
the buyer's mind this Hussman salesman then 
continues: 

“Our refrigerator is a good deal like those two 
buildings. We have set out to build a case that is 


71 




HOW TO SELL QUALITY 


as good as we can make it, and one that will pay 
you the biggest returns over a period of time . 

Putting Competition Into the Imitator Class 

‘‘We built up our business by giving butchers the 
best case that we can produce at the lowest pos¬ 
sible price. Of course, I am very much interested 
in what you say about our competitor’s cases. The 
very fact that our case is being imitated is a high 
compliment for us, because only good things are 
imitated. It shows that our case has merit. 

“As a practical business man yourself, you know 
that it is not possible for any manufacturer to 
make the very best case he knows how, and then 
let his competitors dictate the price for which he 
must sell it. It simply can’t be done. If it were a 
mere matter of building our freezer display case 
down to a price and not up to our standard , we 
are satisfied that we could build you a case that 
would cost from $200 to $250 less money than our 
list price and still have a case that looks every bit 
as good or even better than the one offered you 
by the other manufacturers you mention. But 
I’m going to tell you why we don’t build that kind 
of a case, and why, inasmuch as you intend to 
stay in business, you don’t want that kind of a 
case in your store.” 


72 




PRICE OBJECTIONS AS TALKING POINTS 


In this procedure the salesman has simply 
taken the buyer's objection to a high price and 
used it as proof of quality. The buyer's common 
sense tells him that what the salesman says is 
true. The high price convinces him that the Huss- 
man case has quality features which other cases 
lack, otherwise they could not get two or three 
hundred dollars more for their refrigerator than 
their competitors and still continue in business. 
Salesmen for the Addressograph Company are 
usually able to convince a price objector that the 
machine they sell is the one they want by simply 
stating that in spite of the fact that the Addresso¬ 
graph is the highest priced addressing equipment 
of all, more Addressographs are sold than all the 
other addressing machines put to gether. 

A Poser for the Bargain Hunter 
This tendency to measure quality by the price 
tag becomes especially pronounced when the qual¬ 
ity is not visible to the eye. In such cases a low 
price may easily be more of a handicap to a sales¬ 
man than a help, as is shown by the experience of 
a salesman employed by one of the big Cincinnati 
paper houses. This salesman heard that a manu¬ 
facturer in Columbus was in the market for sev¬ 
eral tons of paper. He jumped on a train and 
soon was in the manufacturer's office. He was 


73 




HOW TO SELL QUALITY 


able to convince the manufacturer that his house 
could give him the service he required, and the 
manufacturer gave him samples of the paper 
which he had used last year and asked the sales¬ 
man to quote on a similar sheet. The salesman 
recognized the sheet as being made by a mill 
which was affiliated with his house, but said noth¬ 
ing to the manufacturer. 


The Cheap Price Made Him Suspicious 

A few days later the salesman returned to Col¬ 
umbus with samples of the identical sheet of 
paper, made by the same mill to the same speci¬ 
fications. He quoted a price which he knew was 
below that which any other jobber could quote 
and fully expected to be favored with the busi¬ 
ness. Imagine his surprise when the manufac¬ 
turer, after a casual examination of the sample, 
declared that he did not believe the sample was 
the same grade of paper. The salesman did his 
best to convince the manufacturer that it was, but 
the manufacturer refused to be convinced. Fin¬ 
ally the salesman asked the buyer point blank 
why he thought the sample was not as good a 
sheet of paper as that which he had previously 
used: 


74 




PRICE OBJECTIONS AS TALKING POINTS 


“Your price is so much under that of your com¬ 
petitor that I can't help but feel the sample you 
submit is of inferior quality.” 

The salesman said: “My price is somewhat 
lower then?” 

“Yes, it is, but the house from whom I received 
the other quotation is a very large concern and I 
have always found it to be reliable, and I know 
that it would not try to secure an unreasonable 
profit on its goods.” 

Well, the outcome of it was that the salesman 
had to have the mill send the skeptical manufac¬ 
turer a small quantity of the paper for an actual 
test before he could convince the manufacturer 
that his price was not too low for the quality he 
wanted. If the salesman had quoted a higher 
price, only a fraction of a cent or so below that 
of his competitor, the manufacturer would prob¬ 
ably never have questioned the quality and the 
salesman could have secured the order more eas¬ 
ily. As it was the low price proved more of a dis¬ 
advantage than an advantage. 


75 




IX—Beating the Price Cutter 
at His Own Game 

N OBODY likes a price cutter. Even those who 
give him business do so reluctantly. There 
is always a question in the buyer's mind whether 
he could not have purchased for less if he had 
held out longer, and the lingering suspicion that 
perhaps someone else is getting a better price. 
This attitude was nicely expressed by Robert 
Nicholas, owner of a bustling hardware store in 
one of Chicago's suburbs. 

“If there is anything I detest,''said Mr. Nicholas, 
in a recent issue of The Hardware Salesman /' it 
is the salesman who always seems to be able to 
find a loophole to quote a lower price. The kind 
of salesman I want to do business with is the fel¬ 
low who will quote you a low price, and then walk 
out of the store without an order before he will 
cut the price. 

“Only a few moments ago there was a salesman 
in to see me who offered a new item. I felt that 
it had merit and selling possibilities, but I was 
afraid the price was too high. I said that it looked 
to me as if the price might be lowered. I did not 
know, in this instance, that a lower price could be 
obtained, but as I said, the price seemed high. 


76 


BEATING THE PRICE CUTTER AT HIS OWN GAME 


When I made the price objection the salesman 
looked me straight in the eye and said, 'Mr. 
Nicholas, that is the best price I have, I cannot 
cut it one cent V And there was something in his 
tone of voice that made me believe him. So I gave 
him the order. 

One Price Men Never Challenged 

"Of course on staple articles we usually know 
whether or not the price is right. We soon learn 
which salesman can be talked into quoting a lower 
price. Those who establish themselves as one 
price men, are never questioned in this store. 

"But once a man cuts a price, we feel that a 
battle over prices is necessary each time we give 
an order, and even after the order is placed we 
still have a notion that we might have been able 
to get a lower price, had we insisted a while 
longer. Then, of course, there is the feeling that 
possibly one of our friendly rivals down the street 
may be getting even a lower price.” 

In these days when orders are sparse it takes 
courage to stand by your guns and firmly, yet 
tactfully, insist on your price. There are times 
when to do so will mean the loss of an order. But 
in the long run this policy pays, for ultimately 


77 




HOW TO SELL QUALITY 


you will establish yourself as a one price salesman 
representing a one price house. 

Buyers Are Paid to Kick at Prices 

Salesmen should remember that purchasing 
agents make their living on the pennies that they 
are able to squeeze out of sellers. They are adepts 
at the fine art of preying on the fears of order- 
hungry salesmen. In selling this type of buyer it 
is often a question of which is the better sales¬ 
man, the seller or the buyer. When the salesman 
gets his price he sells the purchasing agent. When 
the purchasing agent gets what he wants at his 
price he does the selling instead of the salesman. 

Austin A. Breed, president of the casket man¬ 
ufacturing firm of Crane and Breed, tells a story 
on one of his salesmen which shows how it is pos¬ 
sible for a buyer to sell a salesman without the 
salesman even knowing that he is being sold. 

The salesman was sent to see a certain cus¬ 
tomer who was represented to be in the market 
for a large purchase. The buyer had also written 
two other concerns to have salesmen call, espec¬ 
ially requesting that they call at a designated 
hour. 

After the three competitors had a chance to 
cool their heels in the outside office and work up 


78 




BEATING THE PRICE CUTTER AT HIS OWN GAME 


their anxiety and fear as to what the other fel¬ 
low would do, the buyer had them shown into sep¬ 
arate rooms. To each man he gave a copy of the 
specifications. “Now,” he said, “get busy and fig¬ 
ure out the best price that you can make me on 
this material.” 

Price Fear Makes Salesmen Easy Prey 

In a half hour he sent the office boy around to 
collect the bids. He then personally went to each 
salesman and said: “I believe you will have to do 
better. Go over your figures again.” 

The buyer sent the office boy around three times 
after that returning the last bid, but saying noth¬ 
ing. One of the salesmen threw up his hands on 
the fourth round, another on the fifth. But the 
third salesman who did not know that the others 
had left reduced his bid two more times before it 
was accepted. 

In this case the buyer had not told a deliberate 
lie. He had simply staged the scene and left it 
for the fear-thoughts of the salesmen to do the 
rest. All he had said was: “I believe you will have 
to do better,” and he said that only once. Yet it is 
safe to say that both of the defeated salesmen re¬ 
turned to their manager and tried to convince him 


79 




HOW TO SELL QUALITY 


that it was impossible for them to get business 
when their prices were so high! 

Too much emphasis cannot be placed on the im¬ 
portance of keeping fear away. Blind, unnecessary 
fear has ruined more promising salesmen than all 
other causes combined, except sheer laziness. Jock 
Hutchinson, the great golf player, once told a man 
who asked him what he could do to improve his 
game that the most important thing was to keep 
your eyes on the ball and forget your rival's score. 
The golf links are full of players who are really 
excellent players if only they could keep from get¬ 
ting rattled by the other fellow's score. The same 
is true in salesmanship. 

Respect the Face You See in the Glass 

Keep fear away and your success is assured. 
Don't get discouraged no matter how gloomy the 
outlook may seem. Being gloomy won't make it 
any better, and the moment you lose heart you 
lose your hold on yourself. Always remember that 
other men are doing the thing that discourages 
you. School yourself to believe that what others 
can do you can do. When a customer tells you 
that a competitor has offered something just as 
good for 10 per cent less remember that there are 
other salesmen who are selling goods day in and 


80 




BEATING THE PRICE CUTTER AT HIS OWN GAME 


day out with competitors' prices fifty and a hun¬ 
dred per cent lower than their prices. The suc¬ 
cessful salesman goes to the buyer with a definite 
plan in mind. He knows that the plan is one that 
the buyer can profitably use. He makes the buyer 
see the value of the plan just as he sees it and he 
takes away the order. Every time you call upon a 
prospect once after having asked him for the 
order you are weaker in the eyes of two men—the 
prospect and yourself. 


81 




X—Closing a Quality Sale 

I N the foregoing chapters we have considered 
quality mainly as a factor in meeting price 
competition. We have seen how salesmen in varied 
lines of business successfully present quality so as 
to break down the barriers of indifference and 
high price. But it must be kept in mind that qual¬ 
ity talk of itself will not sell anything. It is one 
thing to convince a man that what you offer is 
better than what somebody else offers, but quite 
another thing to make him want your product so 
badly that his reluctance to part with the money 
is swallowed up by his desire to possess it. This 
has already been pointed out. 

The same refrigerator salesman mentioned in 
a previous chapter tells of having talked quality 
to a hard-boiled New England butcher for a whole 
afternoon without being able to get his name on 
the order blank. The salesman had run into the 
well-known condition of “having the prospect 
‘sold' but—.” 

The salesman went back to the hotel and that 
evening thought things over. He went over the 
conversation point by point. One thing which it 
seemed to the salesman had been established that 
was not driven home was the money-making ef- 


82 


CLOSING A QUALITY SALE 


fects of quality. He had told the butcher that a 
Hussman case would save him five cents for every 
time that he would have to open the door of his 
present cooler. But the butcher didn't seem to 
“get it.” If he could only make him realize how 
those nickels mounted up he felt sure that he 
could get an order. Finally the salesman hit on 
the following plan: 

In the morning he got five nickels for a quarter 
and went to call on the prospect. 

He Kept Tossing Nickels Into the Cooler 

Customers were in the store so there wasn't 
any conversation other than an exchange of greet¬ 
ings. But the first time the butcher went into his 
cooler to get some meat for one of his customers 
the salesman threw a nickel right into the cooler 
door. 

The butcher didn't say a word. He looked at 
the salesman and wondered a bit, but the sales¬ 
man kept mum. 

A few minutes later the butcher went again to 
the cooler to get meat for the next customer. The 
salesman threw another nickel into the open door 
right at the feet of the butcher. Still the salesman 
offered no explanation for his actions. The butcher 
became more and more curious. But he didn't say 


83 




HOW TO SELL QUALITY 


anything until after the fourth nickel had been 
thrown, when he stopped and picked up two of the 
nickels at his feet and tossed them onto his coun¬ 
ter. When the last customer had been waited upon 
the butcher turned to the salesman and said: 

“What's the matter with you anyhow, are you 
crazy throwing money around that way?” 

The Profit Picture Closed the Deal 

And the salesman replied: “I just wanted to 
see how long it would take me to throw twenty- 
five cents away, to the tune of five cents every 
time you opened your cooler door. At the rate you 
were going I would have gotten rid of my five 
nickels in thirty minutes—which is at the rate of 
$4.00 a day. When you deliberately throw $4.00 
away every day by sticking to your old fashioned 
cooler, you should worry about me throwing 
twenty cents away. Fll get some of my money 
back anyway (reaching over and pocketing the 
two nickels which the butcher had picked up and 
laid on the counter) but the nickels you waste, 
amounting to hundreds of dollars a year, are gone 
forever.” 

The demonstration of lost profits so impressed 
the butcher that he called in his wife and an or¬ 
der was handed to the salesman for a Hussman 


84 




CLOSING A QUALITY SALE 


patented freezed display counter. The salesman's 
plan succeeded because it painted a profit picture 
with the butcher well up in the foreground. The 
buyer's desire to save nickels overcame his re¬ 
luctance to part with the eight hundred dollars 
which the counter cost. 

Good at Entertaining But Poor at Closing 

Failure to appreciate this simple truth is one 
reason why there are so many men selling quality 
products who are poor closers. You know them 
—the clever, smooth talking fellows who can talk 
most interestingly and entertainingly about their 
products and carry the prospect right up to the 
point of actually signing the order. But there 
they stop. The buyer is most enthusiastic about 
the wonderful line of merchandise the salesman 
carries, he readily agrees that there is no better 
made, but somehow he doesn't feel the urge to 
buy just now. He wants to wait until the market 
“gets settled," or until business picks up, or until 
a “little later." The salesman is sure his pros¬ 
pect is “sold" and so states when he reports the 
call to the office. But unfortunately it takes orders 
to keep a business running. There is a big differ¬ 
ence between a buyer who is “sold" in the sense of 


85 




HOW TO SELL QUALITY 


being impressed and one who is sold in the sense 
of having given you his order. 

Don’t Take Quality for Granted 

There is a temptation for a salesman represent¬ 
ing an old-established house to depend too much 
on the prestige of the house and not enough on 
his own effort. The same is true of a salesman 
selling an article whose superior qualities are un¬ 
disputed. He leans on the quality too much. He 
expects it to do his selling for him, which of 
course it won’t. It is not enough that you con¬ 
vince your prospect of the high quality of the 
thing you are offering, but you must also make 
him want that quality harder than he wants the 
money it will cost. 

I know that this will sound like “old stuff” to 
you older salesmen, but it is a strange thing that 
it is the old timers more than the newer men, who 
are the most inclined to expect quality to do their 
closing for them. 

Illustrating this point an executive of the In¬ 
ternational Harvester Company tells of one of his 
general agents who took four of that company’s 
best salesmen down to the state fair at Nashville 
to open a sale of manure spreaders. 





CLOSING A QUALITY SALE 


These four men worked for three days talking 
their manure spreader, showing the people how 
much better their spreader was than anyone 
else’s. Outside he noticed there was located away 
up on the other side somewhere an older fellow 
with a manure spreader that was very crudely put 
up; it was not a nice machine, and he had not any 
agents with him. He was some old blacksmith 
that had worked a spreader out ;he had no experi¬ 
ence in any business and went off up there by 
himself. 

A Blacksmith Outsold the Experts 
After the International Harvester man and 
his four salesmen had been on the job several 
days without getting a single order he thought he 
would go up and see what the old man was doing. 
So he walked up and stood and listened to him. 
During that time the old man never demonstrated 
one point about his manure spreader, but he had 
farmers there all the time, telling them about the 
advantages of spreading manure evenly on the 
ground and working it in in fine particles. He said 
every once in a while the old fellow would take 
out his order book and a farmer would sign it. 
He asked the man how many spreaders he had 
sold, and found he had sold thirty-one, while the 
four men of the International who had been tell- 


87 




HOW TO SELL QUALITY 


ing how much better their machine was than any 
other, had not taken an order.” 

Make the Buyer See and Feel Quality 

This does not mean that demonstrations do not 
pay. Neither does it mean that the salesman who 
confines himself to talking only about a man’s 
needs will outsell the man who talks quality. On 
the contrary, the blacksmith mentioned above 
would have been a joke in a competitive situation. 
He succeeded because he was talking to farmers 
who probably never compared manure spreaders 
and may even have supposed his was the only 
spreader made. In cases where the prospect’s de¬ 
cision is influenced largely by matching one prod¬ 
uct against the others, the salesman who knows 
his line so thoroughly that he can visualize qual¬ 
ity in a spectacular and impressive way will in¬ 
variably get the business, whereas the man who 
depends on word pictures will go orderless. 

A salesman for the H. D. Lee Company, manu¬ 
facturers of union-alls, has a plan for proving 
quality that is very good. He has three swatches 
of an inferior cloth such as is found in competitive 
garments, one swatch which has been washed 
once, another twice and the other three times in 
an ordinary laundry. He will then have three more 


88 





CLOSING A QUALITY SALE 


swatches of his own high quality material which 
have been subjected to the same number of 
washes in the same laundry. With these swatches 
he is able to show dealer that the higher priced 
material retains its color. He can also measure up 
for the dealer the smaller shrinkage in the higher 
priced material and can build up around these 
proved points his picture of satisfied customers— 
and all that this means in the way of local pres¬ 
tige, insurance against returned goods, the loss of 
customers to competitors, etc. There is hardly a 
thing sold that cannot be demonstrated in some 
way, if the man who is selling it will only think 
hard enough. 

“Seeing Is Believing” 

In any plan for demonstrating quality, however, 
be sure that the demonstration does not stop at 
merely proving the article is made of certain high 
grade materials. A man selling duck awnings can 
soon convince a buyer by using a magnifying 
glass that his goods has more threads to the 
square inch than a competitive awning. This may 
be conclusive to a buyer who knows that a few 
extra threads to the square inch will wear longer. 
But to the average dealer or consumer it sounds 
plausible but it doesn’t prove the case. If the sales¬ 
man follows up his magnifying glass demonstra- 


89 




HOW TO SELL QUALITY 


tion with another demonstration in which he sub¬ 
jects several samples of his own and cheaper 
priced ducks to sudden blows and pounding, it 
would make a much greater impression on the 
buyers' mind and absolutely convince him that 
the higher priced goods will outwear the others. 

The same principle holds good in selling every¬ 
thing—you will get there much faster by talking 
about the effects of quality rather than the par¬ 
ticular ingredients and materials which compose 
the quality. No doubt you have heard this a great 
many times before, it is the dominant idea in 
many of our large sales organizations, but you 
would be amazed to stand beside the desk of the 
average purchasing agent and see how one man 
after another will come in and talk about the won¬ 
derful iron and wood that his stuff is made from. 
What does a buyer care about what it is made of ? 
What he wants to know is what it will do. 


90 




XI—Keeping Old Buyers Sold 
on Quality 

A MERCHANT in a small western city had 
handled a well-known and widely-advertised 
line of beverages for many years. He died a few 
years back and his son succeeded to control of the 
business. 

The son decided that he was paying too much 
for the well-known goods and took on a cheaper 
line. The last year he handled the advertised line 
his sales amounted to $26,000. The year following 
(during which the store handled the cheaper line) 
local business conditions were better, yet in spite 
of that the business done by the store dropped to 
$13,000—just one-half. 

The son afterwards admitted to the salesman 
for the high priced line that the loss of business 
was due to the fact that his trade, having been ed¬ 
ucated to quality merchandise would not take the 
cheaper beverage, although he was able to offer 
far better price inducements. 

The facts in this incident are vouched for by 
one of the largest and most reputable firms in its 
line but whose policy prevents our using their 
name. It is an experience which has been paral¬ 
leled by hundreds of other dealers. Indeed, we 


91 


HOW TO SELL QUALITY 


venture that there is hardly a man of extensive 
business experience who has not learned to his 
sorrow that once people have “tasted” quality 
they will never be satisfied with something “just 
as good.” 

Easier to “Trade-up” Than “Trade-down” 

There is a rule in merchandising that it is 
easier to “trade-up” than it is to “trade down”— 
meaning that a seller can keep offering merchan¬ 
dise of constantly increasing quality and by so 
doing build up his business, but when he attempts 
to cut the quality of what he sells he immediately 
loses the patronage of those whom he has edu¬ 
cated to want only the best. If the only car you 
have driven is a Ford you will be well satisfied 
with a Ford. But once you have driven a Marmon 
or a Cadillac you will never again feel the same 
toward your Ford, and it is quite probable that 
you will become so dissatisfied that you will trade 
it in at the first opportunity for a car of better 
quality. 

Every buyer understands this just as well as 
you do, but some of them lack the determination 
of purpose to withstand the persuasiveness of 
your competitors salesmen. This is especially true 
if you assume that because you have once sold a 


92 




KEEPING OLD BUYERS SOLD ON QUALITY 


buyer a quality line that there is no need of your 
ever mentioning quality to him again. This is a 
failing common to us all. We are ever ready to 
spend weary hours and unlimited money to win 
new customers, but once we win the customer we 
rest on our oars. There is no such thing as a cus^ 
tomer who is sold so thoroughly that he can be 
neglected — particularly when it comes to being 
sold on paying a higher price. 

When Customers Are Left to Sell Themselves 

A well known soap manufacturing concern was 
taken over by the banks a few years ago because 
excessive selling costs had eaten up all the sur¬ 
plus. The business was facing disaster. A com¬ 
mittee of bankers made an analysis of the busi¬ 
ness. They located the trouble in the high rate of 
dealer mortality. In one year five hundred new 
accounts had been opened, which was on its face 
a good record, but the gain was more than offset 
by a loss of six hundred old accounts. 

The new management concentrated its sales ef¬ 
fort on keeping the old customers sold, and made 
little effort to win new accounts the first two 
years. As might be expected sales costs began to 
drop at once. It costs less to increase the sales to 
customers already on the books than it does to go 


93 




HOW TO SELL QUALITY 


out and get new ones. Inside of six months the 
volume of orders turned in by the sales force had 
increased nearly one-third, and before the year 
was out had practically doubled. Yet the selling 
expense was but little more. 

Nothing Succeeds Like Re-orders 

During the second year a peculiar thing hap¬ 
pened. The policy of concentrating sales effort on 
present customers had the effect of turning what 
had previously been dealer indifference to the 
product into pronounced enthusiasm. The dealers 
saw their sales of the product increase steadily as 
a result of the co-operation they were getting 
from the company's salesmen. Gradually the idea 
became fixed in their minds that the line was a 
fast seller and a money-maker. Naturally they 
talked about it to other dealers and other sales¬ 
men. One dealer told another. One salesman told 
another. 

Before long it became pretty well newsed about 
that this particular line of soap was one of the 
best a dealer could handle. The company, instead 
of having to spend all its profit talking skeptical 
dealers into “trying a few bars to see how it will 
take with your trade," found itself in the enviable 


94 




KEEPING OLD BUYERS SOLD ON QUALITY 


position of having the dealers come to it and ask 
on what terms they could handle the line! 

There is nothing that succeeds so well as suc¬ 
cess, and there is no better way of making success 
succeed than through the untiring, intelligent up¬ 
building of present customers. This holds true in 
selling anything. 

Use Old Customers to Get New Ones 

The salesman who sells a so-called “one time” 
specialty such as an adding machine, an automo¬ 
bile or life insurance should least of all neglect the 
customer he has put on the company's books. The 
old customer who has been thoroughly sold on 
quality to begin with, and kept sold on it after 
buying, is a salesman's best source of leads. The 
saying that a satisfied customer is a concern's 
best advertisement is very true. An old customer 
is constantly coming in contact with persons who 
contemplate buying. These persons naturally ask 
his advice. His answer will make or break the sale 
according to how thoroughly the salesman has 
done his work. Then too, few concerns stand still 
in business. They are continually in the market 
for improved models, new equipment or equip¬ 
ment for other business enterprises in which they 
are interested. 


95 




HOW TO SELL QUALITY 


In selling products for resale you will occas- 
sionally encounter the peculiar condition that the 
dealer is secretly prejudiced against quality prod¬ 
ucts because they last too long! The makers of 
Cheney's cravats have this to contend with. Com¬ 
petitors prey on the money hungry haberdashers 
by whispering in their ears that they are driving 
away business by handling Cheney's stuff — it 
lasts too long. 

“Your Stuff Lasts Too Long” 

If the dealer is inclined to buy on impulse with¬ 
out thinking very deeply he will make the tragic 
mistake of either substituting a short lived article, 
or else hiding the Cheney line so that only those 
who demand Cheney quality will get it. More¬ 
over to make the situation worse it is unlikely 
that the dealer will say anything to the Cheney 
salesman for fear of putting himself in the posi¬ 
tion of considering profits regardless of good will, 
which the dealer knows very well is fundamentally 
wrong. The same condition exists in the paint 
field, to a less pronounced extent, and in every 
other field where quality means longer life, or 
makes the product go farther. 

Do not wait for your trade to bring up this ob¬ 
jection to quality before planting a charge of 
dynamite under it. Regardless of what your cus- 


96 




KEEPING OLD BUYERS SOLD ON QUALITY 


tomers admit you may rest assured that hardly a 
day goes by but what some smooth-talking sales¬ 
man who is in the “game” to make a killing is 
poisoning your customer with this idle talk. Make 
it a point to keep an ear open for concrete in¬ 
stances, such as we cited at the opening of this 
chapter, which conclusively prove the long dis¬ 
tance business building features of your line. 

Impress upon your customer that he is in busi¬ 
ness to stay and that a reputation for handling 
quality goods is the best possible business insur¬ 
ance. 

Remind him that a quality business is slower to 
get under way but once under way nothing can 
stop it—“the first hundred customers come hard, 
the second hundred come easier and the remain¬ 
ing hundreds are attracted by the crowd.” 

Give Your Customers the Big View 

Last but not least repeatedly emphasize that 
goods with known reputation for quality are half 
sold, (we know, of course, that they sell them¬ 
selves but it is not wise to shut the merchant out 
of the picture entirely). The extra cost involved 
in selling unknown goods of questionable quality 
will usually more than offset any loss, real or im¬ 
aginary, resulting from longer life or greater 


97 




HOW TO SELL QUALITY 


reaching qualities. If the dealer uses a uniform 
mark-up the consequent extra profit on the higher 
priced goods is “velvet.” 

It sometimes happens, however, that certain 
conditions necessitate a maker setting a lower re¬ 
sale price on an article than the cost of production 
should call for. Competitive conditions might 
make it wise to put out a superior article at the 
competitor’s retail price. 

Profits Are Often Deceiving 

Then again the maker might figure that the 
lower resale price will stimulate sales, and even¬ 
tually give him greater volume. On most products 
profits hinge on volume so that such a course 
would be good business. But to do this the maker 
must not only be satisfied with a smaller profit 
himself, but he rightfully expects his dealers 
(who stand to profit by the policy just as much 
as he will) to be satisfied with a smaller mark¬ 
up. Unfortunately the small business man lacks 
the vision of the big business man and instead of 
viewing the matter in its large aspects he some¬ 
times takes the small view. 

To keep your customers sold under these con¬ 
ditions requires educating them to the difference 


98 




KEEPING OLD BUYERS SOLD ON QUALITY 


between a large profit and a slow turn-over and a 
small profit with a fast turn-over. 

This is easier said than done, for strange as it 
may seem very few small business men really un¬ 
derstand the principle of turn-over. They all say 
they do. Most of them think they do. A few can 
even tell you just what it means, but the fact re¬ 
mains that they are all in need of constant resell¬ 
ing on this point. Why? Because it is human na¬ 
ture to think that a bird in the hand is worth two 
in the bush. A twenty cent mark-up looks bigger 
than a ten cent mark-up. Which, of course, is not 
always so when the balance sheet is added up at 
the end of the year. 

Tony Turns Over a Ten-spot 

To help Goodrich salesmen get over the turn¬ 
over idea to their trade, the B. F. Goodrich Rub¬ 
ber Company suggested the following illustration. 
It can be fitted to what you sell just as well as 
Goodrich has made it fit the tire business. 

“Every morning Tony, the banana man, buys a 
cart load of bananas costing $10.00, and before 
night he sells them for $20.00. 

“Working every day, including Sundays, he 
turns his stock 30 times a month. He does a gross 


99 




HOW TO SELL QUALITY 


business of $7,200.00 a year, and a half of it is 
profit. 

“After a few years Tony can frame his orig¬ 
inal ten spot and live off the income of his apart¬ 
ment houses. 

“Of course, the answer to Tony's success is 
turnover. And the answer to any tire dealer's suc¬ 
cess is the same. You can push the sale of tires 
that are unknown and turn your stock once or 
twice a year. Or you can push Goodrich and 
“clean house" every couple months. Thinkover-^- 
Turnover." 

When You Feel Yourself Slipping 

Before leaving the subject of “how to sell Qual¬ 
ity" there is one more point that might be made, 
and that is the quality of your salesman¬ 
ship. When you get a turn-down here and a turn¬ 
down there until your pace begins to slow up; 
when you begin to expect buyers to shoot objec¬ 
tions and you doubt your own ability to handle 
these objections properly—what's wrong? Simply 
this: you are losing your quality—it needs warm¬ 
ing up. 

One way to wipe out the blue atmosphere is to 
remember that your company is going right ahead 
doing business year after year. It has built up a 


100 




KEEPING OLD BUYERS SOLD ON QUALITY 


large business and it is going to keep on building: 
—nothing can stop it. Just remember this when* 
you are talking with pessimistic buyers. A little 
thing like their pessimism is not going to stop a 
big success like that of the company you are 
working for, so how can it stop you? You are 
going to be carried right along with the business 
as long as you keep working and working . 

When you feel yourself slipping, go back and 
read some of your literature; study your proposi¬ 
tion ; sell yourself again. Then call upon your buy¬ 
ers and show them the pride and confidence you 
have in your company. 

A Man Is No Bigger Than He Thinks He Is 

Your success in selling quality depends on your¬ 
self. If you want to achieve big things think big. 
Think big orders. Visualize them. Then go and 
get them. When the buyer brings up petty ex¬ 
cuses and trivial objections sweep him off his feet 
by showing him the bigger aspect of the problem. 
Dare to presume that the customer is a big buyer 
and a big visioned business man, even though he 
may not look the part. It is a curious fact that 
very frequently people who have the price to pay 
for quality do not look like quality articles them¬ 
selves. 


101 




, 














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♦ * 






















































































SUPPLEMENT 


How to Illustrate 
the Economy of Quality^ 



“When a person buys a cheap article, he feels 
good when he pays for it, and disgusted every 
time he uses it. When he buys a good article, 
he feels better every time he uses it, for the 
recollection of quality remains long after the 
price is forgotten. ” 

E. C. Simmons 




.104 





How to Illustrate 
the Economy of Quality^ 


r | V HE following plans have been submitted by 
A salesmen in different lines of business. In 
each case they have proved useful to some sales¬ 
men in his line of business. We cannot hope that 
all of these illustrations will fit into your sales 
tactics, or prove useful to you in driving home 
quality. But we will set them down, without any 
embellishments, just as they have been handed 
to us, hoping that among them you may find one 
or two ideas that will help you to become a better 
quality salesman. 


When a Farmer Quotes 
the Big Catalogue 

Buyer: “That’s too much money. I saw one just like it 
in Rear’s Soebuck’s big catalogue for $45. Guess 
I’ll buy from them and save some money.” 

Seller: “Do you know, Si, you remind me for all the 
world of the fellow who fed his horse saw dust 
to save the cost of oats. The horse was getting 
along fine when he died.” 

105 


HOW TO SELL QUALITY 


If the Buyer Should be an 
Employer of Salesmen 

Seller: “In selling your merchandise, Mr. Jones, I 
assume that you employ salesmen?” 

Buyer: “Yes, we have five.” 

Seller: “And of those five, I suppose there is one who 
sells more than any other man.” 

Buyer: “Yes, I have one man who sells three times as 
much as all the others put together.” 

Seller: “But you pay him a good deal more salary than 
you do the others, don’t you?” 

Buyer : “Why certainly.” 

Seller: “And in spite of the fact that you pay him a 
much bigger salary, I will venture to say that he 
is the lowest priced salesman you have on your 
sales force, and that the men you pay the small¬ 
est salaries to are the highest priced salesmen on 
your force? 

Buyer: “That is about the size of it.” 

Seller: “It is the same in everything, don’t you think, 
Mr. Jones? The best is always the cheapest, and 
the cheapest is usually the most expensive. It is 

particularly true when it comes to buying an- 

etc.” 


106 





ECONOMY OF QUALITY ILLUSTRATIONS 


Are You Selling Service? 

Buyer: “We know of another concern whose fees are 
considerably lower than yours.” 

Seller: “I don’t know who you have in mind but I will 
say quite frankly that there are any number of 
men in town whose fee is anywhere from one- 
half to two-thirds of ours. The same is true of 
lawyers, doctors or any professional men who 
offer specialized knowledge. If your wife had a 
goiter you would want the very best surgeon you 
could find to operate on her, I am sure. In all 
probability you would send her to Mayo brothers. 
You could find any number of doctors right here 
in town who would claim that they could do all 
that the Mayos would do for much less than you 
would have to pay the Mayos, who as you know 
charge on the basis of your ability to pay. But 
you know, and I know, that in the long run you 
would save money, and more important still save 
your wife untold suffering, by getting the very 
best skill money can hire. When you are buying 
brains, Mr. Prospect, the best is always the 
cheapest, etc. 

For the Buyer Who 
Drives a Car 

Buyer: “But I can get them for less.” 

Seller: “Surely you can. So can you get fabric tires for 
less than you pay for those cord tires you use on 
your Marmon. But you cheerfully pay half again 

107 




HOW TO SELL QUALITY 


as much for the cords because you know that you 
will get twice the mileage with only half the tire 
trouble. What is a hundred dollars if you can 
save two hundred? Now, there is just as much 

difference between the-, that you say you can 

buy for less, and what I am offering you, as 
there is between cord tires and fabric tires. You 
know very well that you can’t get a cord tire for 
the price of a fabric and you wouldn’t expect to, 

and you should not expect to get our-for the 

price of-’s.” 

When the Product is Backed 
By a House of Quality 

Seller: “As I understand it Mr. Brown you are opposed 
to my product on the grounds that you can get 
just as good for less money?” 

Buyer: “That’s it.” 

Seller: (Reaching into his inside pocket and taking out 
two baby bonds—one a United States government 
bond and the other a bond on a local theatrical 
enterprise): “Now I am going to hand you two 
pieces of paper, Mr. Brown. They are both one 
hundred dollar bonds. They are both beautiful 
things of gilt and bronze. So far as looks go, one 
is exactly as good as another. If you are going to 
invest one hundred dollars in bonds, and had only 
these two to choose from, which of the two would 
you buy?” 


Buyer: “Why the government bond of course.” 

108 








ECONOMY OF QUALITY ILLUSTRATIONS 


Seller: “And may I ask why you would buy the govern¬ 
ment bond which you will have to pay $98 for as 
compared with the other bond which you can buy 
at $95?” 

Buyer: “Because I know something about the govern¬ 
ment and I don’t know anything about the build¬ 
ing bond. My money would be safer, and I would 
willingly sacrifice the difference in first cost to 
get a safer investment.” 

Seller: “In other words, Mr. Brown, you would buy the 
more expensive bond because of what is back of 
it. That is what any wise business man would 
do, and I contend that the same principle holds 
true in buying. So far as the product goes it looks 
the same, it feels the same—I’ll even admit it is 
the same (which it isn’t) just as both of these 
pieces of paper are “bonds”. Now then—let’s see 
who is behind the product, etc. 

If the Buyer’s Hobby is Base Ball 

Buyer : “I’ll admit that there is a good deal to what you 

say, and probably your-is better than those 

Blank is selling. But all the same, Blank’s line 
is a whole lot cheaper. 

Sellers “Cheaper? Of course it is cheaper. When you 
want to see a good ball game you pay $2.00 to 

see the- (naming his pet team) play. If you 

are only out to save money why don’t you go to 
the cheapest game you can find?” 

Buyer: “Because its worth the extra to see a real game.” 

Seller: “Sure it is. And its worth the extra to get our 
-. Here’s why, etc.” 

109 








HOW TO SELL QUALITY 


Going the Prospect One Better 

A check protector salesman says: 

“Yes, you can buy a machine for less money—all 
the way from $5 up. In fact you can buy a paper 
crimper for twenty-five cents, if you want some¬ 
thing that is merely connected with check protec¬ 
tion. But if you want real protection, and a ma¬ 
chine that will stand up like a real machine, etc. 

An advertising space salesman says: 

“I am sorry, Mr. Advertiser, if I gave you the 
impression that our publication would prove a 
“cheap” medium from the standpoint of getting in¬ 
quiries. When you use space in Printers , Ink you 
are buying more than inquiries. You are buying the 
prestige that goes with thirty years of advertising 
leadership. You are buying a short-cut to recogni¬ 
tion as a national headquarters for your line. If 
you are interested only in inquiries, you can get 
them by the hundreds for as low as five cents each 
by merely sending out some government reply cards 
asking your prospects to write you for prices. But 
your advertising should do more than merely bring 
in inquiries. 

If You Sell Protection of Any Kind 

Buyer: “Your price is way too high. I can buy it for 
much less.” 

Seller: “That is very true, Mr. Wilson, you can buy it 
for less money. I don’t blame you at all for say¬ 
ing that because if I were in your position I 


110 







HOW TO ILLUSTRATE QUALITY 


might feel precisely as you do. But after all, it’s 
not the first cost that we should consider in mak¬ 
ing our decision. The important thing is what it 
will do for you. You can buy a latch for your 
doer for tw T enty-five cents that will lock the door, 
but will it keep a burglar out or afford you the 
same protection that you will get from a Yale 
lock?” 

For the Man Who is Proud 
of His Watch 

Buyer : “That’s all very well, but still I can’t see the idea 
of paying you ten cents a dozen more than I am 
now paying.” 

Seller: “For the same reason, Mr. Brown, that the rail¬ 
roads of this country are not run by dollar 
watches. You can buy a watch for a dollar or a 
hundred dollars. This is not casting any reflec¬ 
tions on the watch that made the dollar famous, 
because a dollar watch may keep good time for a 
year—in fact it is guaranteed to do that. But 
you know that the next watch you buy is going 
to be a watch that will keep good time for the 
rest of your life. Isn’t that so?” 


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